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THE ART OF 
SAILING ON 

t 3 

By EDGAR WHITAKER WORK 



Author of 

THE HOUSE OF CHIMHAM 

THE LAND OF FAR DISTANCES 

STUDY TO BE QUIET 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU ST. NEW YORK 



3X1 m 
H437/97 



Copyright, 1912, by 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



LC Control Number 



tmp96 028761 



CI.A308 



0748 



Bebtcateb 

TO THE 

FOURTH CHURCH BROTHERHOOD 

"Men that have been a comfort unto me." 



FOREWORD 

It is believed that the title of the first address 
in this volume may with some fair degree of pro- 
priety stand as the title of the volume itself. For 
the spirit engendered in the hearts of those who 
consort closely with the Gospel of our Lord is ever 
a spirit of patience, perseverance, and the quiet 
winning of victory through grace. Quick and eager 
imagination, the gift of hopeful prophecy, the 
power of heroic endeavor and forward enterprise, 
together with a solid fixedness of the heart in the 
never-abrogated promises of God — these are the 
structural qualities that will make what Bushnell 
called " Building Eras " in the Kingdom of our 
Lord. The Master waits ever upon the eagerness 
and enterprise of his people, to " see of the travail 
of his soul and be satisfied." 

The Christian task grows with every hour. It 
is no day for a narrowed vision or a vanishing 
hope. If difficulties multiply, they are made to be 
conquered. If obstacles increase, the dynamic of 
the Gospel is not weak. The showbread of the 
Tabernacle is the " continual bread " of the Pres- 



6 Foreword 

ence. God is with us. Our Lord is more master- 
ful than the storm; he can still the tumult of the 
people. Let all mariners then on the high seas of 
life rejoice in that they sail not without chart and 
compass, and rejoice most of all in the presence of 
the Master-Mariner, whose voice brought calm to 
stormy Galilee. Let them practise then " The Art 
of Sailing On," and on, and ever on, until the 
kindly hour of grace shall fully dawn, and the good 
ship shall enter the harbor of the country for which 
they look ! 

New York, March, igi2. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Art of Sailing On ... 9 

II. The Urgency of Christ ... 29 

III. A Sound of Gentle Stillness . . 47 

IV. The Ministry of the Little Hills . 61 
V. Christ Calling Men .... 77 

VI. A World of Song 93 

VII. Our Own Rivers 105 

VIII. A Song of the Heart About Christ . 125 

IX. The Guild of Bricklayers . . . 143 

X. The Honors of the House . . . 159 

XI. Loads and Burdens . . . -173 

XII. Blessed Be Laughter! . . .191 

XIII. The Sacrament of Spring . . .207 

XIV. Power from on High . . . -225 
XV. The Passing of Simplicity . . .247 



THE ART OF SAILING ON 



" In your patience ye shad zvin your souls." 

Luke 21 : 19. 



I 

THE ART OF SAILING ON 

Whatever else is known or said about Chris- 
topher Columbus, we know that his was a stout 
heart. For when the land for which he looked 
failed to come into view, he wrote in the ship's log: 
" This day we sailed on." And when the ship's 
crew were upon the point of mutiny he wrote again 
in the log: " This day we sailed on." And when 
despair almost overwhelmed him and was like to 
dim his great vision, he turned again to the ship's 
log and wrote: "This day we sailed on." Day 
after day, though his spirit may have quailed, his 
pen wrote the words : " This day we sailed on." 
And this is how we may know that the discoverer of 
this Western land of ours was a man of stout heart. 

There is a strain of sublime heroism in men that 
daily makes the world a better place. The physical 
and moral courage of men is an unfailing orna- 
ment of humanity. Even if we knew the power of 
endurance in human nature, watts and amperes 
could not express it in comprehensible terms. 



12 The Art of Sailing On 

Horse-powers are easy of computation, but man- 
powers elude our grasp. When men are found to 
be wanting in endurance, then the knight-errantry 
of women appears. It is Browning who writes: 

"The world's male chivalry has perished out, 
But women are knights-errant to the last.'' 

If we knew as we walk the streets, passing the 
multitude on the way, if we knew the silent en- 
durance of many, the heart would thrill with 
amazement. The crowd contains many heroes. 
How many uncalendared saints there are! Fra 
Angelico may paint saints in every nook and cor- 
ner of his monastery, with nimbuses and blue and 
gold aureoles, but there is no one to paint halos 
about the heads of the saints of common life. 
There are unwritten histories that would fill the 
alcoves of many libraries. There are untold stories 
of endurance that would out-fiction fiction. Na- 
thaniel Hawthorne dwelt fondly upon his " Twice- 
told Tales." We need many other authors who 
shall revel in untold tales. 

It is only now and then that we open suddenly 
some surprising chapter of human life and look in 
upon the secret of power, as when we read in the 
log of the bold discoverer: "This day we sailed 
on." Everybody in England and America is read- 



The Art of Sailing On 13 

ing a certain book just now — a story written in 
leisurely style, with such a fine touch of romance, 
and such a picturing of heroic character, as lit- 
erature has scarce known since the days of " Henry 
Esmond." It is instructive to learn of the trouble 
the author experienced in publishing his book. 
Across the sea he came from England to this 
country, to offer his manuscript in turn to as many 
as three publishers. Each of them declined it. 
Back again to his own country he went, and there 
success came. In the log of his life he might have 
written: " This day we sailed on." 

" Sailing on " is not a noisy virtue, but it is ex- 
ceeding fine. The eloquence of quiet suffering is 
often greater than the eloquence of orators. Wen- 
dell Phillips could face the mob in Faneuil Hall 
and speak in words that burned of the " pictured 
lips " of those who looked down out of the past. 
But it was a little slip of paper that came to his 
hands just before the speech, written by his invalid 
wife at home — " Wendell, no shilly-shallying now " 
— that fired his heart with courage. If some one 
could tell us the story of those who endure behind 
the scenes, it would be a wonderful chapter in hu- 
man history. 

Biographical dictionaries have so little to tell us 
after all. They begin with the date and place of 



14 The Art of Sailing On 

birth. They mention their subject's parentage and 
the early influences of his life. Next they begin 
to relate his achievements, the things accomplished, 
the positions occupied, the work done. Presently 
they write down the date of death. Is that all? 
One of the most important things has been left out, 
the mention of how he " sailed on." Storms came 
and difficulties multiplied — almost the shipwreck 
of hope itself. Yet he " sailed on." 

Biographers know so little of this. Encyclo- 
pedias cannot depict the struggles of the human 
spirit. In this sense biography is the most elusive 
form of literature. Morley writes two volumes 
in his " Life of Gladstone." Alden writes two 
volumes in his " Life of Phillips Brooks." Even 
so, the great statesman's power to " sail on " in 
the face of adverse winds, the great preacher's 
power to endure in the preaching of the Gospel, 
are not fully defined. Our own great Lincoln has 
had a score of biographers, but none of them has 
been able to tell the meaning of the burden he 
bore, often with a sad smile upon his face, nor 
define the power by which he endured. 

This is a monumental thing in human history — 
the power to " sail on " when the seas are rough. 
Patience is probably one of the greatest of the vir- 
tues, yet it is a quiet virtue. It has behind it the 



The Art of Sailing On 15 

massive power of silence. Men who are pressing 
on are not like to proclaim it from the housetops. 
Often it is a modest, shrinking virtue. It hides 
away in the lives of men whose backs are bent and 
whose hands are heavy with toil. 

I have sometimes considered that the most sub- 
lime spectacle we see from day to day is that of 
men going to their toil in the early morning. It is 
only the commonplace spectacle of endurance. 
" This day we sailed on." We have seen this silent 
force at work in the lives of pale-faced women 
who have families to support. How wonderfully 
they endure ! It is sublime. Now and then there 
is a crisis, and they go tottering and breaking to 
their toil. Nevertheless they go on. The story of 
how men and women go on in this world will never 
be told. No painter can paint the history of a soul's 
struggle. Motion pictures are very wonderful — 
they are now able even to show the growth of 
flowers — but no motion picture is delicate enough to 
show the patience of souls. How many there are 
who suffer and grow strong! 

Jean Francois Millet, the painter of " The An- 
gelus " and of other wonderful canvases, has also 
written some strong sentences. It is he who said: 
" Art lives by passion alone, and a man cannot be 
deeply moved by nothing." It is true that noth- 



1 6 The Art of Sailing On 

ing great is accomplished without passion, and pas- 
sion means patience, it means even suffering. Now 
and then a discoverer stumbles upon some secret of 
nature, or an inventor breaks in by accident upon 
the hiding-place of some useful fact. For the most 
part, however, nature's secrets are wrung from her 
by the patience of souls that have held on. Re- 
member Palissy the potter, remember Pasteur the 
scientist, remember Cyrus Field and his Atlantic 
cable, and the thousand others who gave gifts of 
patience to the world. In many things our modern 
world is growing impatient, losing the old secret 
of long toil and the ancient art of " sailing on." 
Boys to-day would rush pell-mell out of the gram- 
mar school into the arena of life, while men would 
build fortunes by speculation in a day which for- 
merly required a quarter-century of persistent toil. 

This, however, is only an outward aspect of our 
quick age. To the most of us is still given the 
discipline of patient doing of our tasks. It is still 
true that Rome cannot be built in a day. If you 
have a hard task to perform, look not to round it 
to completion between the setting of suns. God 
gives us long labors. Things too quickly done are 
often weakly done. Cement requires time to 
harden. Be patient about your task. Keep on ! 

You will remind me that difficulties are like a 



The Art of Sailing On 17 

thicket about us. Shakespeare wrote of the " sea 
of troubles." He was thinking of the way in which 
trouble follows trouble, so that everywhere the 
mariner looks there is a " sea of troubles." It is 
often so. For a long time there will be plain sail- 
ing, then the rough seas ! One will often see a 
man of affairs in the world, full of success, flushed 
with victory — then suddenly a quick wind out of 
the northeast, and the rough seas ! 

Perhaps the crises come to draw forth the stout- 
ness of hearts. We do not know. Moralists dis- 
agree about this. It is certain that some break and 
go down under crises. But it is also certain that 
some rise and are stronger than before. Failure is 
not necessarily the worst friend a man has; it may 
be his best friend. It may teach him a score of 
lessons that else he had not learned. It may enable 
him to gather up his wasted powers, to hold him- 
self in hand. A life without some failure is too 
sure of itself. It is a fatal thing to say of a man 
that he always succeeds. A life of invariable suc- 
cess knows nothing of the growing pains of en- 
durance, nothing of the " passion of patience." 

Often there is nothing left to a man to do but 
to write: "This day we sailed on." But the art 
of sailing on is a wonderful art. It is the art that 
men practise who have stout hearts and who nour- 



1 8 The Art of Sailing On 

ish strong faiths in their breasts. When there is 
nothing left to do but to sail on, that even is no 
slight thing. Very sublime the spectacle of those 
who go on with their work amid difficulty. There 
is not a day that passes in this world that does not 
witness tens of thousands of heroisms; and the 
heroisms of failure are more wonderful than the 
heroisms of success. It is easy to go with the wind, 
but to trim sail and fight one's way into the teeth 
of the wind — oh, that is wonderful ! " This day 
we sailed on " — the day when foes were many and 
friends were few. " This day we sailed on " — the 
day when the grip of self began to weaken and the 
rush and tumult of reason were at hand. 

There are some men who, when they fail, fail 
sublimely. It was so with Beaconsfield, whose 
maiden speech only brought derision in the Eng- 
lish Parliament. Out of the pain of his defeat 
he arose to the height of patience as he cried out 
to the Parliament, " The time will come when you 
will be glad to hear me! " He failed sublimely. 
If we could but learn to take defeat as a tonic to 
the soul! Some stand still when they are defeated. 
Others write in their life-book: "This day we 
sailed on." 

The labor of building character — what a patient 
work this is! It is a moral task that is worth 



The Art of Sailing On 19 

while. Nothing equals it for silent heroism. In 
this we often misjudge men. We do not know 
what is going on in their lives. We witness an 
outburst of temper in a man, and we say, " What 
an unreasonable man ! " If we only knew the other 
side, if we only knew the story of his patient strug- 
gle with himself ! 

The Scripture urges moderation in judgment. 
" Judge not, that ye be not judged." " Brethren, 
even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye who 
are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gen- 
tleness : looking to thyself, lest thou also be 
tempted." If your neighbor's weakness is bad 
temper, yours may be a gossipy tongue. The dif- 
ference between ill-temper and gossip is that ill- 
temper has outbursts, while gossip is a slow fire. 
The truth is that the work of building a character 
is no child's play. A carpenter can put together a 
frame building in a few days, but if men wish to 
build a marble hall they must have time and pa- 
tience. " Let us run with patience the race that is 
set before us." 

How often a bit of an evil habit will trip a man 
up in the race or bowl him over even in the pres- 
ence of the world. We have seen strong men be- 
come like a soft play-ball in the furry paws of a 
kitten. Birds resting on the hands of the clock 



20 The Art of Sailing On 

in our church clock-tower have been known to stop 
the machinery. A little stone in the shoe is a 
plague to walking. A slender arrow, so be it is 
but properly tipped, may reach the heart of a giant. 
It is sad that men are so often the victims of little 
faults. It is the little foxes that spoil the vines. 
It does not require a crocodile to spoil the oint- 
ment. 

No, the work of building character is not a task 
for a day. It requires patient endurance and heroic 
endeavor. In work like this we require the art of 
sailing on. Moral force is cumulative. The wall 
of resistance will after a while become impregna- 
ble, if you keep on building the wall. Each time 
an evil habit gains the upper hand there is a breach 
in the wall. Go back again and fill up the breach, 
only make the wall stronger than before. Char- 
acter comes by not stopping, not giving up. " This 
day we sailed on." 

There is another test of patience, and that a 
very severe one: it is when men experience the dif- 
ficulty of establishing moral ideals in this world 
of ours. If you should go into the heart of Africa, 
among a heathen tribe, and there begin to set up 
an ideal of human government, you would scarcely 
be surprised if you failed. But even in the world 
that calls itself moral the progress of moral ideals 



The Art of Sailing On 21 

is slow. Ours is an enlightened nation, having 
benefited as much as any by the light of govern- 
ment, education, art, science, and religion. Yet 
how slow are the ideals of peace and justice in 
becoming established! If any man thinks that hie 
can change the thoughts of men in a year, even in 
a decade, let him buckle on his armor ! There are 
still many who refuse to believe that the world is 
round, and the number is legion of those who still 
believe in the sign of a falling broom or the sign 
of a black cat crossing the road, or who shiver at 
the number thirteen. Moral enlightenment is ever 
slow. Mushrooms grow overnight, but not ideals, 
not institutions, not the greater structures of the 
soul. 

The difficult ideal of peace is very slow to be 
realized. It has a thousand open and secret foes. 
Its greatest foe is the belligerent nature of man. 
Let us have patience. During the first ten years of 
the twentieth century ninety-six arbitration treaties 
have been signed. All previous centuries have wit- 
nessed ten wars to one arbitration treaty. The first 
ten years of the twentieth century have witnessed 
fifty treaties to one war.* Peace is coming. " This 
day we sailed on." 

How often we have been disappointed in our 

♦"The Peace Problem," by Frederick Lynch, p. 30. 



22 The Art of Sailing On 

American experiment at popular government! 
Prophets of the Old World prophesied failure 
when the experiment began, and now there are 
not a few on both sides of the water who count 
the experiment a failure. In this day of our sup- 
posed failure what shall we ao? The answer is 
this: " This day we sailed on." At times it seems 
to us that the world's progress is beset by dif- 
ficulty: but the art of sailing on is a wonderful 
solvent of difficulty. 

The Christian Church — is there any task in all 
the world requiring such patience as the task that 
has been undertaken by the Church of Jesus Christ? 
There are hours and days when we wonder if the 
cause of Christ is really making progress in the 
world for which he died. Statistics often startle us. 
The signs of the times frighten us. The indif- 
ference of the world to the Cross of Jesus almost 
blinds us. There are those who tell us that re- 
ligion is a dream, immortality a beautiful illusion, 
Christ himself a name for an ideal. Meantime 
vast social changes have taken place that threaten 
religious principle. One would suppose that there 
are those who think that they may go to heaven 
in an automobile, and who would really prefer it 
to Elijah's chariot of fire. Others, it is to be 
feared, will be without their vocation in the other 



The Art of Sailing On 23 

world unless the other world can furnish certain 
social diversions. Such vast numbers of people in 
our modern world are devoting themselves so as- 
siduously to the business of being entertained, 
amused, having their sensibilities satiated, that one 
wonders how they can possibly find anything to do 
in the other world. 

The difficulties the Church has to confront have 
never been confined to the outside world. There 
are internal difficulties as well. It is a difficult 
thing to run a church, mainly because there are so 
many people in the average church who do not 
practise the art of sailing on. Organizations come 
and go. Every ten years — even less than that — 
much of the machinery has to be taken out and re- 
placed by new machinery. Almost the only organ- 
ization in modern days that seems to have the 
power to go on for ever is the Woman's Mission- 
ary Society. God bless the knight-errantry of 
women in the Church ! 

Strange to say, the most difficult thing to main- 
tain in the average Christian Church is the prayer- 
meeting. This is an anomaly which no one can 
adequately explain. The Church believes in prayer. 
One would suppose its prayer rooms would be filled 
with worshippers seeking the help and strength 
which come at God's altars. The truth is that a 



24 The Art of Sailing On 

great many church members have taken the prayer- 
meeting off their list of engagements and have 
put something else in its stead. 

One might easily write a new set of Beatitudes 
for the churches: 

Blessed is the man whose calendar contains 
prayer-meeting night. 

Blessed is the man who is faithful on a com- 
mittee. 

Blessed is the man who will not strain at a driz- 
zle and swallow a downpour. 

Blessed is the man who can endure an hour and 
a quarter in a place of worship as well as two hours 
and a half in a place of amusement. 

Blessed is the church officer who is not pessi- 
mistic. 

Blessed is the man who loves the church with 
his pocket as well as with his heart. 

Blessed is the man who is generous to his neigh- 
bor in all things except the application. 

Blessed is the man whose w r atch keeps church 
time as well as business time. 

Blessed is the man who has grace to leave the 
critical spirit on the sidewalk when he comes to 
church. 

Blessed is the man who loves his own church 
enough to praise it. 



The Art of Sailing On 25 

Blessed is the man who has patience as well as 
piety. 

Ah ! yes, there are difficulties enough, internal as 
well as external, in the task which the Church has 
undertaken ! Nevertheless, " this day we sailed 
on." No one ever truly said that the Christian 
life is easy. Often there are head-winds, and now 
and then the storm comes out of the north. It is 
" the Kingdom and patience " of Jesus Christ that 
we need to know, the patience as well as the 
Kingdom. 

There are black moments and dark days, and 
nights when the stars are blotted out. There are 
times of discouragement, when you need all the 
heroism that is born of faith to keep you going. 
There are days of temptation when sin returns with 
terrific force to lay siege at the citadel of the soul. 
There are hours of silent crisis in life, of which 
the world knows naught, when vital things seem 
to be slipping away. There are periods even in 
experience which are like blank pages in a book. 
Sorrow has blotted out the handwriting, or care 
and anxiety have written across the lines, or de- 
spair has snatched away the meaning of the old 
message that the heart loved. 

What shall we say for such hours as these? 
" This day we sailed on. This day we sailed on." 



26 The Art of Sailing On 

Blessed be the fine art of sailing on which God 
has given to men in the Gospel of his Son ! Let 
us thank God that ours is a Gospel to make stout 
hearts. Patience is a valuable commodity in the 
Kingdom. The work cannot be done in a day. 
Keep on ! Character cannot be finished in a year. 
Work away ! The Church has not embarked in a 
temporary business. Do not drop your tools! 

Lord Rosebery spoke to his nation not long since 
of the " grand, saving, adventurous touch " of the 
Elizabethans. Thomas Carlyle wrote of the Norse 
Sea-Kings: " In the old Sea-Kings what an indom- 
itable rugged energy! Silent, with closed lips, as 
I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially 
brave: defying the wild ocean with its monsters, 
and all men and things, progenitors of our own 
Blakes and Nelsons. No Homer sang these Norse 
Sea-Kings : but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, 
and of small fruit in the world, to some of them." 

When Henry M. Stanley found David Living- 
stone doing his patient work in the heart of Africa 
he wrote: " His is the Spartan heroism, the inflex- 
ibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of 
the Anglo-Saxon — never to surrender his obliga- 
tions until he can write ' finis ' to his work." And 
he added: "The natives passing Livingstone ex- 
claim, ■ The blessing of God rest upon you ! ' " 



The Art of Sailing On 27 

The world seems very careless. Nevertheless 
the world keeps its true love for those spirits who 
sail on across rough seas, through fog and mutiny 
even, to the haven of their hope and trust. 

And the Master of us all prizes patient endur- 
ance, for he said, " In your patience ye shall win 
your souls." This is our Lord's appreciation of 
the wonder-working power of patience. Men re- 
quire to possess their own souls by patience. If 
it be an ill-temper, the duty is plain enough; but 
far more than that, it is patience that wins the soul 
for life's battle and life's task. " In your patience 
ye shall win your souls." A wonder-working 
power indeed this is, when a man having possessed 
his soul by patience gives himself daily to his work 
in the world ! There are no great victories for 
impatient men. The greater victories await the 
coming of patience. Is not our Lord opening for 
us a secret of life? If there be among those who 
read these words a man who has failed, or one 
who suffers discouragement, or even one who is in 
blank despair, let him hear the good cheer of the 
Master's word: "In your patience ye shall win 
your souls." 

And to those who are doing the Master's work, 
what a tonic effect the words of Christ should 
have! How often the hand wearies in the doing 



28 The Art of Sailing On 

of our Christian task ! How frequent are the hours 
of waning energy and of drowsy hope! How 
many are the days in which we seem to see no 
fruit of our labors, in which the slow fire of dis- 
couragement burns in the heart, and the tempta- 
tion is strong to lay down the tools and run away! 
For such hours as these, as well as for all days 
when the flush of success is on, we need to realize 
the wonder-working power of endurance, we need 
to add to our faith patience. Day by day as we 
do our own work, and live our lives, let us write in 
the log of life the sentence of the stout-hearted 
mariner: " This day we sailed on." 



THE URGENCY OF CHRIST 



" Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any 
man hear my voice and open the door, I will come 
in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 

Rev. 3 : 20. 



II 

THE URGENCY OF CHRIST 

There is a tone of great urgency in the ministry 
of Jesus Christ, like one who stands at a door 
knocking, knocking, knocking. The eagerness of 
the world's Saviour is very evident. There is no 
mark of indifference upon his work. He is insis- 
tent, almost intrusive. There is a certain impera- 
tive about his appeal that fairly startles us. He is 
seemingly conscious of an unusual authority and 
power. We observe no hesitation, no wavering in 
his sense of mastery, no lack of pressure, no lack 
of passion, in his work. 

It is this note of urgency that makes men's work 
efficient everywhere. If there is no imperative 
about what you are doing, how can you hope to win 
the interest of men to your task? If ten men fail 
through lack of ability, a hundred men fail through 
lack of urgency. Indifference wins no victories. 
Lack of urgency ties the hands and hobbles the 
feet. It is not required that a man play always 
31 



32 The Art of Sailing On 

on the loud pedal: the soft pedal has many uses. 
In either case let there be no uncertain sound. 

We often miss the tone of urgency in the work 
that men are doing. You will sometimes go away 
from a store feeling that there was no urgency 
about the salesman, no passion of interest and de- 
sire. You will sometimes have this impres?ion 
about people whom you meet. They may be never 
so punctilious in their greetings, never so formal in 
their outward seeming. But all the while you are 
conscious of lack of heart, lack of urgency, lack of 
insistence. The " apathy of anaesthesia " is upon 
them. There is no imperative anywhere. 

It is a great thing to say about one's work, " I 
know," and it is a great thing to say, " I will," 
and it is also a great thing to say, " I do." But 
it is a greater thing than all to say, " I feel." We 
demand that men shall take their work seriously, 
and themselves feel its weight and its power. 

" A ruddy drop of moving blood 
The surging sea outweighs." 

Is there motive power in the work you are doing? 
Do you feel it for yourself? Has it gripped your 
soul and become part of your life? No matter 
what your work may be, is there urgency about 
it? Is it fraught with importance? Have you any 



The Urgency of Christ 33 

passion for it? Does it grip your own heart, com- 
mand your faculties, inspire your forces? Does it 
sing in your blood with a divine imperative that 
will not be denied? The best work that the world 
knows has always this mark of urgency upon it. 

Shall we meditate together upon the degree of 
urgency and imperative in the work which Jesus 
Christ is doing for men? There is a profound im- 
pressiveness about it — the fact that Jesus Christ 
has ever such an urgent way with men, such a 
masterful way. It was so when he was here, en- 
gaged in his earthly ministry, and it is still the 
same in that perpetual ministry which he carries on 
among men through the Holy Spirit. It is the 
perpetual, urgent ministry of Jesus that profoundly 
interests us. At times it fairly startles us. It is 
just this fact of our Lord's being so deeply inter- 
ested in his work for men as to keep it constantly 
before them that wins victories for his Gospel. 
To him his own work is so very urgent that he 
would make it so with men. He would not let any 
man feel that he, the Master Workman, is indif- 
ferent or ever can be. He would give his work 
such pressure, such insistence, such imperative, that 
no man in his right mind can possibly feel that it 
is a small matter whether he shall give it attention 
or not. 



34 The Art of Sailing On 

I wish that we might see this eager, urgent side 
of Christ's dealing with men: his own anxiety to go 
as far as he can with them, his eagerness to meet 
conditions, to go the full length of any man's needs, 
and more than this, his readiness to break down 
closed doors even, for the sake of coming into the 
midst and living with men in their lives. Is not 
this what his declaration means: " Behold, I stand 
at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice 
and open the door, I will come in to him, and will 
sup with him, and he with me "? 

We can scarcely escape this impression whenso- 
ever we sit down to consider the mission of Christ 
to the world. His cause is nothing if not urgent. 
There is something startling in the New Testa- 
ment. There is a thrill of passion about it: there 
is a call of something strong. The philosopher 
Kant spoke of the categorical imperative — the 
something imperious in a man's reasoning that beats 
upon his soul and will not be gainsaid. The New 
Testament has its categorical imperative — the 
something imperious and spiritual that presses close 
upon a man's heart. How can a man read this 
little Book without feeling the knocking at his 
heart? The thrill of passion is in the ministry of 
Jesus Christ. 

Recall the urgent tone he used with his parents 



The Urgency of Christ 35 

when they came seeking him in the Temple. " I 
must be about my Father's business." Remember, 
too, how he called his disciples when he found 
them at their fishing or at the receipt of custom. 
It was simply this: " Follow me." But a sense of 
compulsion swept over the hearts of men with the 
words. Not stopping to reason or to argue, they 
left all and followed him. 

Outside the circle of his followers men felt the 
urgency of his presence. When the conspirator 
Catiline entered the Roman Senate his fellow- 
senators shrank away from the bench on which he 
sat. The presence of Jesus Christ drew men by a 
real imperative. Nicodemus must have felt it, for 
he was drawn to him even in the nighttime. The 
rich young man must have felt it, for he came run- 
ning unto Jesus. When he went into the country 
of the Gadarenes a demoniac rushed out of the 
tombs under an apparent pressure, crying, " What 
have I to do with thee ! " When the band came 
out to the Garden on the fateful night seeking him, 
and he came boldly forth and said " I am he," we 
learn that " they went backward and fell upon the 
ground." There is a strange compulsion about 
Jesus which men often confess in irresistible ways. 
The centurion at the crucifixion exclaimed, " Cer- 
tainly this was a righteous man! " The disciples 



36 The Art of Sailing On 

shut the doors for fear of the Jews, but they could 
not shut out Jesus. It is such a wonderful truth — 
this truth of Christ's being willing to insist, even 
to break in — that we must dwell upon it: " Behold, 
I stand at the door and knock." 

Think of what it means that our Lord is so much 
in earnest about his work that he cannot but be 
urgent ! His work is of such worth to him that 
he cannot do it lightly, cannot do it at all without 
putting a strain of compulsion into it always. A 
famous actor criticised a preacher severely: " If I 
had as little earnestness in presenting the fiction of 
the stage as you have in presenting the truth of the 
Gospel I should lose my audience at once." And 
often the world finds no compulsion in our Gospel. 
Men come into our churches and find everything 
fine and beautiful and stately, but they miss the 
note of the urgent, the irresistible. Too much the 
imperative mood has gone out of preaching and the 
subjunctive mood has come in. Preaching is sooth- 
ing, it is apologetic, it is entertaining, but it is not 
often enough imperative. Men do not find the 
urgent Christ because they find so little urgency in 
his disciples. 

No man could say this about the preaching of 
Jesus. Be it fisherman, scribe, ruler, nobleman, 
Sadducee, or Pharisee, they were all alike impressed 



The Urgency of Christ 37 

with his earnestness. They said, " Never man 
spake like this man!" They said, "He speaks 
with authority, and not as the scribes." What- 
ever any of us may think or do about Christ, we 
have to say that his earnestness is beyond all doubt. 
His words ring true. Urgency comes with all his 
messages which stirs a man often in his very being. 
" Behold, I stand at the door and knock! " 

It is a very wonderful thing indeed, more won- 
derful than any truth of science or philosophy, that 
Jesus Christ is here in the world, content in a hun- 
dred quiet ways to urge his cause. 

It is Christ himself — the very fact of Christ — it 
is himself that is urgent. There are personalities 
that leave no impression upon us, or at least only 
a negative impression. They originate no feeling, 
they create no compulsion within us. We note 
them casually, and then we pass on our way to 
forget them. It is not so with Jesus Christ. His 
is not a casual personality. He dares to say with 
very pronounced emphasis, " Behold, I stand at the 
door and knock." He is different from all others. 
It is impossible to see him and then go one's way 
forgetful. It is impossible to know about Christ 
and not receive some impression. The impression 
he leaves is not negative, it is positive. There is 
somewhat that is urgent about the fact of Christ. 



38 The Art of Sailing On 

You cannot think him away. He is there: "Be- 
hold, I stand." You cannot evade the person of 
Jesus Christ. It is a fact, it is an argument, it is 
a force. It is impressive, persuasive, urgent, in- 
sistent. 

It is all so wonderful and so beautiful — this mys- 
terious power of personality that emanates from 
Jesus Christ. It is even wonderful among mere 
men to observe the power of personality. The 
English people paid a fond tribute to the personal 
force of their noble statesman John Bright. They 
were wont to say that when he had spoken all 
others were silent. So of Gladstone. Enemies at- 
tacked him, revolutions of political feeling surged 
about him, nevertheless England acknowledged his 
power. John Morley, his biographer, declares that 
when William E. Gladstone slipped into his seat 
in the House of Commons the entire House felt 
the thrill of his presence. 

Men of our day often try to imagine the effect 
of the personal presence of Jesus Christ. A few 
years ago books were written and sermons preached 
on such topics as these: " If Christ came to the 
City," " If Christ came to Church," " If Christ 
came into Business Circles, into Society, into Poli- 
tics." In a company of authors one day the con- 
versation turned upon the great men of the past. 



The Urgency of Christ 39 

If they should come again, any of them, and mingle 
among modern men, what would our feeling be? 
Charles Lamb spoke forth in his sudden and eccen- 
tric way: " If Shakespeare came into this room," 
he said, " each of us would stand upon his feet to 
honor him. But if Jesus Christ came, we should 
kneel in his presence." 

That is the difference. The personalities of 
great men call forth honor. The personality of 
Christ is urgent and compulsive in a deeper way. 
It calls forth reverence and worship. Is it not 
true that Christ is knocking at the door, in view 
of what he is in himself, in his personality? What 
think ye of Christ? Men who have not settled the 
question of who and what Jesus Christ is — how 
urgent is the knocking at the door with such as 
these! For Christ does not go away from our 
thinking. He does not shrink beneath the shad- 
ows: he does not drop below the horizon. " Be- 
hold, I stand at the door and knock." 

The call of Christ is urgent: " If any man hear 
my voice!" "If any man hear my voice!" 
There are many voices heard in the world, the 
voice of the orator, the voice of the pleader, the 
voice of the philosopher, the voice of the poet. 
Among them all the voice of Jesus is the most 
urgent, the most insistent. " Behold, I stand at the 



40 The Art of Sailing On 

door and knock; if any man hear my voice." 
The voice of Christ is speaking at the door. This 
is no fancy of pietistic minds. There is an intense 
spiritual realism about it. The call of Christ is 
active to-day, as much so as when he found men at 
their fishing on the Sea of Galilee, or at the re- 
ceipt of custom in Capernaum, and bade them to 
follow him. It is wonderful, this truth; one can- 
not adequately express it. Only let us make it clear 
that the voice of Christ is urgent. It is not a 
casual voice, speaking in indifferent or careless 
tones, neither is it a strident voice. It is a clear, 
true, straightforward voice, speaking directly to 
the soul — to the feeling, to the hope, to the desire, 
to the conscience, to the will that are in the soul. 
It is ever an imperative voice. 

" If any man hear my voice! " The voice of 
Christ has carrying power. It is not loud; often 
it is a very quiet voice. We do not think of Jesus 
Christ as shouting his call to men ! " He shall not 
strive nor cry aloud, neither shall any one hear 
his voice in the streets." The voice of Christ is 
very quiet, very gentle, but oh, it is very intense, 
very penetrative, very far-reaching ! It is the Holy 
Spirit who makes the voice of Christ so strong in 
the heart. He takes of the things of Jesus. When 
the voice of Christ is heard in this spiritual way 



The Urgency of Christ 41 

it carries quite into the inner precincts of the soul 
and makes itself heard. 

It is very wonderful how men are often made 
to hear the voice of Christ, even when they are 
not listening for it. They are going on their way, 
like Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus, and 
suddenly the arrest of a Heavenly Voice comes to 
them. There is a certain musical value, as it were; 
about the voice of Jesus Christ: it has awakening 
power, the power to create response. If a room 
were full of musical instruments, and some one 
gifted with a true voice should come and speak a 
pure tone in the midst of these instruments, they 
would respond in silence — pianos, organs, violins, 
harps, they would every one respond to a pure tone. 
That is a wonderful truth of musical values. A 
pure tone has a certain urgency, a certain com- 
pulsion about it, that produces response. 

Now the voice of Jesus Christ is not unlike this : 
it is a pure tone and it has the power to awaken 
response. Suppose our Lord were to enter our 
room and speak his own Gospel in our presence, 
surely we should know the urgency of his voice. 
The strings of our hearts, like the strings of 
pianos or harps, would respond in quiet music in 
answer to his call. 

Something of this we know by experience. 



42 The Art of Sailing On 

What voice has ever spoken to us like the voice of 
our Lord? Christ's teaching! — what a response 
it has stirred in the human heart. What he said 
about God, when he bade men to pray " Our Fa- 
ther"; what he said about the restlessness of sin, 
when he said, " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest " ; 
what he said about immortality and heaven, when 
he declared, " In my Father's house are many man- 
sions " — this is the pure tone of the Gospel. It 
has the urgency and force of truth about it. It 
speaks away down into the human heart. It has 
carrying power, it has power to awaken response, 
musical response, if you please, spiritual response, 
down deep in the soul. That is the wonder about 
Jesus Christ — that his voice is thus urgent, urgent 
in all the deep places of the soul, urgent in the real 
needs of human life, urgent in the profound hopes 
of the soul, urgent in the judgment and conscience 
of the spirit. 

Our Lord said a wonderful, a startling thing, 
a thing to make us all pause and consider: " All that 
the Father giveth me shall come unto me." Men 
have turned this saying almost into a theological 
puzzle. It has marked a dividing line between one 
school of theologians and another. But how full 
of meaning it is, and how clear in the light of this 



The Urgency of Christ 43 

truth about responding to the Gospel: as if Jesus 
had said, " I have come into the world among men, 
among all these harps and violins and organs of 
humanity, I have come to speak, the pure tone of 
the Gospel, and every man who detects the pure 
tone will answer and will respond. All such the 
Father giveth unto me, and they will come unto 
me, for I have power to draw all such unto my- 
self." 

The sentence in this reading may lose something 
of its theological form, nevertheless it remains a 
startling statement. If we have lived on in the 
world with Christ standing at the door, and his 
voice speaking in his Gospel, through his Spirit, 
and have not responded in our deepest being to 
him, have never been awakened to our need of 
him, have never opened the door — that is a tragedy. 
It is like the musical tragedy that transpires when 
a pure voice speaks and all the musical instruments 
respond, only there is one that has something lying 
upon the strings so that it does not respond to the 
pure tone. Take your own hands off the strings 
of the harp! Open the door! Open the door! 
Let the voice of Christ be heard far down in the 
deep, dark, mysterious recesses of the soul. 

It is the voice of a Friend. How urgent his 
friendship is! how much we need his fellowship, 



44 The Art of Sailing On 

his companionship ! He is the great Companion. 
" If any man hear my voice and open the door, 
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and 
he with me." Does any man feel the need of 
divine companionship? That is the urgency of 
Jesus Christ; his appeal is to every deep need of 
the soul. 

It is the voice of a Saviour, one whose call is 
powerful with the appeal of sacrifice. How urgent 
is the cross ! Jesus Christ and him crucified ! The 
Apostle Paul thought it was sufficient to preach this 
message. It is such an One who is standing at the 
door. That is his final call, that is his greatest 
urgency, the urgency of love, the urgency of his 
sacrifice on the cross. 

There is a hymn, you remember, that runs like 
this: 

" O Love that wilt not let me go." 

That is Christ's urgency, his compulsory way with 
men. And you remember how the hymn closes : 

" O Cross that liftest up my head, 
I dare not ask to fly from thee! " 

That is the last article in the logic of God with 
men, the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the knock- 



The Urgency of Christ 45 

ing of the Gospel at the door. That is the urgency 
of love and sacrifice. 

In the annals of the State of Tennessee there is 
a story of an early Indian raid. In one home a 
family were all killed except a little child, who was 
carried into captivity, and the mother, who was ab- 
sent from home. The child grew to manhood 
among the Indians, an Indian in appearance, in 
language, in customs. Years went by, and Daniel 
Boone with others led an attack against the hostile 
red men. It was the same tribe. Among the 
Indians captured was the one who had been carried 
away captive. The mother, grown old, was called 
to see the captive. She set herself to stir the mem- 
ories of her long-lost child. She used many devices, 
but there was no response. The Indian remained in 
stolid indifference. At length the old mother said, 
" I will try one thing more." She began to sing 
one of the crooning songs of his childhood. Some- 
thing in the mother's voice, the pure tone of love, 
of motherhood, reached the heart of her child. 
It awakened, it answered the call. Wherever there 
is a closed heart, Christ is knocking, Christ is call- 
ing at the door. His call is the call of love. 

" Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any 
man hear my voice and open the door, I will come 
in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 



A SOUND OF GENTLE STILLNESS 



" And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the 
mount before Jehovah. And, behold, Jehovah 
passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the 
mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before 
Jehovah; but Jehovah was not in the wind: and 
after the wind an earthquake; but Jehovah was not 
in the earthquake : and after the earthquake a fire; 
but Jehovah was not in the fire: and after the fire 
a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah 
heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, 
and went out, and stood in the entrance of the 
cave." 

I Kings 19: 11-13. 



Ill 

A SOUND OF GENTLE STILLNESS 

Earthquakes do not as a rule convert men. 
" A great and strong wind " is not of necessity a 
valuable aid to the Kingdom; nor can a fire, how- 
ever great, be depended upon always to warm the 
heart to God. These forces of nature are power- 
ful and spectacular enough, but they are not win- 
some. Physical phenomena are not rich in spiritual 
effect. Niagara creates wonder in the mind, but 
Niagara has few conversions to its credit. Vesuvius 
is an awesome place, but one does not hear that 
volcanoes add to the piety of men. 

The truth is that these forces and events of na- 
ture are not of necessity moralizing. If it were so, 
we ought to find those persons who live and work 
amid the wonders and shocks of the world in the 
front ranks of piety. If the shocks and perils of 
the world have power to soothe and refine the 
spirits of men, then danger were an adjunct and 
an ally of the Kingdom. Coal-miners ought there- 

49 



50 The Art of Sailing On 

fore to develop a special type of piety, a little 
better than that of men who live and work in the 
safety of the open air. Sailors also ought to be 
more reverent and more spiritual than other men. 
Have they not often experienced the converting 
and cleansing power of high seas and terrifying 
storms ? To take a modern example, the airmen — 
they who enjoy such vivid and spectacular views 
of the glory and power of the world, who swing 
like birds above plain and mountain, ride upon 
the storm, and are caught betimes in the grip of 
mighty forces that send them crashing to earth — 
surely these men of peril and calamity ought to 
be the most spiritual men now living ! 

If earthquakes could make men moral, the best 
thing to happen in some of our modern cities would 
be for them to be caught in the grip of nature's 
forces and shaken from center to circumference. 
One would like to recommend an earthquake or 
more for present-day politics as practised in some 
of our illy-governed cities. Or one would like to 
suggest a series of daily windstorms for a full 
month. If windstorms could relieve us of graft 
and other deformities and dishonesties; if fire 
could burn away our social impurities and our pub- 
lic injustices; if earthquakes could frighten us into 
moral living and shock us into religious faith and 



A Sound of Gentle Stillness 51 

practice, the reform of modern society would be 
a simple matter. For each storm that blew up out 
of the sea, crashing windows and doors and piling 
debris in the streets, would after all be a civilizing 
force. 

Other phenomena of nature might be expected 
to prove spiritually helpful. Zero weather might 
improve our tempers, so that a man would speak 
more gently to his wife. The Aurora Borealis of 
the northern sky might fill the prayer-meeting 
rooms with eager worshippers. Clouds scudding 
across the sky might cause men to fall upon their 
knees, and downfalls of rain or snow might pro- 
mote church-going. If the wonders of nature and 
the calamities of the world are needed to make 
men do their duty, surely this ought to be a very 
dutiful world. 

But it is not earthquakes and windstorms that 
men need to deepen their spiritual life and sharpen 
their sense of duty. Earthquakes are strong, but 
they have a dull edge. They do not reach, be- 
tween bone and marrow, into the soul. The soul 
requires softer agencies, which at the same time 
work deeper effects. God's appeal is quiet, but it 
is like thunder in the soul; it draws a man out of 
his hiding-place to stand " in the entrance of the 
cave." Not the crash of world-forces, not dead 



52 The Art of Sailing On 

men's fears, not exhibitions of power — none of 
these are the main method of God. 

Hence our Lord once and again bade his dis- 
ciples not to bruit abroad the story of his miracles; 
hence also he added his sequel to the parable of 
the Rich Man and Lazarus, wherein Abraham's 
reply is so conclusive : " If they hear not Moses and 
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one 
rise from the dead." The omnipotent God could 
cause some absent member of each home to rise 
from the dead for the purpose of converting the 
entire household — if that would do it! He could 
lay hold upon those Christians who are living along 
in an easy-going, lackadaisical, indifferent way, 
making religion a game of battledore and shuttle- 
cock, holding duty at arm's length, and starving the 
Kingdom of the strength and help they ought to 
give to it — he could come to such of his people with 
a blinding sun or a ravaging fire, and turn them 
again to the first works, to the doing of the loving 
tasks of the Kingdom. That would be well enough 
— if it would accomplish the desired end! But 
men do not grow spiritually in this way: they re- 
quire an inner voice that reaches the soul, that tells 
them of the Presence of God, and woos them by 
his love and pardon. 

All this is the lesson that the prophet must 



A Sound of Gentle Stillness 53 

learn in Mount Horeb. We cannot much blame 
him: he had been under immense strain. When 
men are under great strain they do not always 
reason well. It is amazing that God dealt so pa- 
tiently with his overwrought prophet. Think of 
where he had been and what he had been doing — 
the withering drought of three years' duration, the 
flights by day and the vigils by night against royal 
hatred, the doubt and disbelief of the people, the 
mighty nerve-straining contest on Mount Carmel, 
and the cruel threat of the wicked Jezebel. These 
were enough, but there was more — there were the 
doubts and fears of his own soul and the despair 
that overtook him at the sign of the juniper-tree. 
Oh, if Jehovah, his Jehovah whose power was with- 
out limit, would but come crashing down upon the 
world, and convince the people, and put his ene- 
mies to rout by some exhibition of power! 

Then he slept — under the juniper-tree. Blessed 
be sleep ! When we are troubled, may God give us 
the power to lie down and sleep! " So he giveth 
unto his beloved sleep." How often in the morn- 
ing the light breaks after refreshing sleep. " And, 
behold, an angel touched him, and said unto him, 
Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there 
was at his head a cake baken on the coals, and a 
cruse of water." Then he slept again. Blessed 



54 The Art of Sailing On 

be the second sleep of a tired man ! And the angel 
touched him again and said, " Arise and eat, be- 
cause the journey is too great for thee." Oh, that 
wonderful care of God for his overwrought 
prophet! If Elijah had lived to-day, some phy- 
sician of the body would have sent him to a sani- 
tarium for nervous prostration. God rested him 
under the juniper-tree and then called him up to 
the mountains, to whisper a great secret to his 
heart. 

See him there in Mount Horeb, a cave his lodg- 
ing-place. He is the prophet of a lost cause. His 
soul is crying out for power, for violence from on 
high. Oh, if Jehovah would come and rend the 
hearts of men ! 

One day he stood in the mouth of the cave and 
looked out upon a gathering storm. It was no 
light zephyr of the hills, but a " great and strong 
wind " that rent the mountains. It was Jehovah 
passing by: nevertheless the prophet's heart told 
him that Jehovah was not in the wind as he had 
supposed he would be. Another day he was climb- 
ing the mountainside when he felt the earth trem- 
ble beneath his feet. Some strange force seemed 
to tear the world apart, lifting it and shaking it 
as a child shakes a toy. It was Jehovah passing 
by — that he knew. Nevertheless his heart told him 



A Sound of Gentle Stillness SS 

that Jehovah was not in the earthquake as he had 
supposed he would be. The third day it was the 
smoke of a great forest fire that rose from the 
mountainside and filled the sky. Little by little the 
fire crept up the mountain, until it swept in fury 
around the prophet's hiding-place and drove him 
into its innermost recesses. Surely this was Je- 
hovah ! Yes, Jehovah was passing by. Neverthe- 
less the prophet's heart told him that Jehovah was 
not in the great fire as he had supposed he would 
be. 

Then came a memorable day: a gentle breeze 
came murmuring and sighing out of the pines. It 
was soft and tender, with a winsome something 
that caught the hearing of the soul. It came 
breathing sound, and as it came it grew, not in 
volume, but in power of appeal; it became articu- 
late. It was something human, nay, more, it was 
something divine. It was " a still small voice " 
— a sound of gentle stillness * — and it whispered 
its message to the heart of a troubled man. " And 
it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped 
his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in 
the entrance of the cave." No longer was he the 
despairing prophet of a lost cause. He had felt 
the stillness of God's power. He had learned the 

* Marginal reading, Revised Version. 



56 The Art of Sailing On 

secret of the divine method. He had experienced 
the wooing attraction of the still small voice in the 
heart. • 

It was a lesson worth learning. And so it is to- 
day. God passes by in many outward events, but 
his real business is with the soul. Therefore he 
sends the voice to speak to men. Winds, earth- 
quakes, fires, are not delicate enough for the soul. 
Only the voice can be heard in the secret and won- 
drous domain of the spirit. How penetrative the 
voice is! Barriers may be set up, but the voice 
overleaps them all and makes itself heard. How 
persuasive the voice is! The voice is the wooing 
note of nature. The tender maiden, how her heart 
stirs at the voice of her beloved ! 

" The voice of my beloved ! behold he cometh, 
Leaping upon the mountains, 
Skipping upon the hills." 

With what matchless art the voice practises the 
stillness of power! Its gift is not the gift of argu- 
ment, its power is not the power of logic. It sings 
to the heart a song that the heart knows and loves. 
It enters the inner precincts, like a friend of old, 
and woos the heart and wins it, calls forth its 
affection, evokes its tenderness. 



A Sound of Gentle Stillness 57 

That " sound of gentle stillness " — how it may 
reach across the barren tract of years and sound 
in the heart ! The voice travels afar, despises dis- 
tance, laughs at bars and locks, knocks insistently 
at the door of unwilling ears, masters the heart's 
inattention. So it is that the " sound of a voice 
that is still " echoes in many a heart. We would 
not have it otherwise, for these voices of the past, 
are they not tokens of life's sacredness? 

Quite familiar is the incident, but satisfying still 
is its personal lesson, of the workman who wrought 
high up on the ceiling of a great cathedral. Then 
there came one who was gifted with a wondrous 
voice. This man stood in the pulpit of the sanctu- 
ary and spoke one sentence of the Word of God. 
High up on the ceiling the workman saw no one, 
but he heard a voice, and it spoke to his soul. His 
soul was awakened. 

" The still small voice " seems to come from 
afar. Yet it is so near as to sound like a whisper 
in the ear. A young lieutenant in the English 
Army went away to South Africa with his regi- 
ment. His mother gave him her Bible, but he put 
it at the bottom of his trunk and left it there. One 
day he sat at the door of his tent and watched 
the manoeuvres of a company of soldiers. He 
heard the commands of the officers and witnessed 



58 The Art of Sailing On 

the obedience of the troops. Suddenly he seemed 
to hear a voice telling him that there is a Great 
Commander whom men ought to obey. He rose 
quickly from his place, went to his trunk and took 
out his mother's Bible, and as he read it he gave 
himself to God. 

The soul's conscience is the wooing note of God, 
calling men to better things. There is no roar of 
windstorms or crash of earthquakes in conscience. 
It is the quiet persuasiveness of the higher reason. 
What an example this of the stillness of God's 
power, for often amid the crash and ruin of out- 
ward things the still small voice of conscience pre- 
vails in the soul. Often the still small voice is 
heard in the quiet thinking of the heart, in the 
longings and desires, the quiet and tender feelings, 
the unexpressed sorrow, the prayers that no man 
has ever heard, in those solid though quiet con- 
victions of the soul that are " deep-seated in our 
mystic frame." 

" Come now and let us reason together," says 
the voice. Whereupon the soul's inborn traits and 
honorableness, the gifts of nature lodged in the 
blood by gracious parentage, the tendencies of life 
accentuated by influence and training — these rise 
and listen to the call. What an appeal is this — 
the appeal to the better nature of the soul ! And 



A Sound of Gentle Stillness 59 

often when all outward appeals have failed it is 
this quiet call to a man's better self that avails. So 
it is that men's hearts grow tender when the name 
of " mother," " wife," or " child " is spoken, and 
so it is that the springs of the soul's life are often 
touched by the simple mention of some finer ambi- 
tion of the heart or some conscious need, or by 
the mention of some dark shadow of the soul or 
some secret sin, as when the Master said to the 
woman at the well, " Go, call thy husband ! " 

God's way with us is a spiritual way. If he 
looked for outward effects he would make earth- 
quakes, winds, and fires the agents of the King- 
dom. But his business is with the soul, therefore 
he sends an articulate voice — a sound of gentle still- 
ness in the heart. Events of nature pass away, 
but the sound of a voice lives on. Its echoes are 
heard in the halls of memory, its imperative lasts 
on through the years. 

It is thus that the Holy Spirit works in the 
heart through the Gospel of Christ, by a sound of 
gentle stillness. How deep and tender are his per- 
suasions, how insistent his calls, how eager his out- 
reachings ! The Holy Spirit is the wooing note of 
God, the winsomeness of love. It is not to be 
wondered at that the New Testament uses its 
strongest words about the Holy Spirit—" resist 



60 The Art of Sailing On 

not," " grieve not," " quench not." What a dire 
calamity to resist or grieve or quench the still small 
voice! "And it was so, when Elijah heard it, 
that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went 
out, and stood in the entrance of the cave." 



THE MINISTRY OF THE LITTLE HILLS 



And the little hills:' 

Psalm 72 : 3. 



IV 

THE MINISTRY OF THE LITTLE HILLS 

The writers of the Old Testament are con- 
stantly speaking of the mountains and hills. They 
have said many wonderful and beautiful things, 
but none more comforting than the words of this 
seventy-second Psalm: " The mountains shall bring 
peace to the people, and the little hills." And it 
is the latter part of the text that is most comfort- 
ing of all, " And the little hills," or to speak it 
with emphasis upon the right word, " And the 
little hills." Our Revised Versions have omitted 
this word. Nevertheless it is just the word that we 
want most of all. The Hebrew uses two words 
here: the Authorized Version translates one moun- 
tains and the other little hills. The distinction is 
a proper one, and our lesson to-day will hang upon 
the word little. " The mountains shall bring peace 
to the people, and the little hills." 

" And the little hills." These have their part 
to play in a man's life as well as the great and 
63 



64 The Art of Sailing On 

mighty mountains. It is well to say this, for we are 
constantly forgetting it. So many of us, like the 
Psalmist, lift up our eyes to the mountains, and 
forget the little hills. We want the obvious, the 
prominent, the great thing. It is so natural to ex- 
pect that peace will come down out of the moun- 
tains. Are they not very high and very strong? 
Have they not untold resources in their great 
heights? Nevertheless a man who lives only 
among the great things is missing a great deal. 
There are the little hills, and they also are ap- 
pointed to bring peace to the people. 

" And the little hills." Is it not possible that 
a right grasp of this small text may do something 
to broaden our view of life, and at the same time 
deepen and sweeten its joy? The mountains are 
here in our lives, the great truths, the large per- 
sonalities, the obvious blessings. Let us thank God 
for all these. And the little hills are here in our 
lives also, the minor truths, the lesser persons, the 
implied, the indirect blessings. Let us not fail to 
thank God for these also. So it is my purpose to- 
day to echo in your hearts this truth of the little 
hills, and the text is so short that even a child may 
remember it: "And the little hills," "And the lit- 
tle hills." 

As we reflect upon it to-day, a new truth, or at 



The Ministry of the Little Hills 65 

least the new realization of an old truth, may 
dawn upon us, the truth that the peace or happi- 
ness of life depends more than we suppose upon 
the way we use the margin of life. Away out there 
at the edges of our lives there are things that are 
not great or mountainous at all; they are rather like 
the little hills that crowd in upon the edges of the 
landscape. And these little things have peace in 
them as well as the great things. Life has many 
explicit things and obvious things that we have to 
do with every day. But the implicit things, the 
things that are not obvious at all, the things that 
lie in the shadow, the things that often shrink away 
into an obscure corner, the things that stand out 
there on the margin — these also shall bring peace 
to the people. It is this that we want to em- 
phasize from one point of view and another. Do 
not overlook the marginal things in life; make use 
of the subordinate; live not altogether by the obvi- 
ous and the great things; give place to the little 
hills as well as the mountains. 

" And the little hills." Let us be reminded first 
that many of our choicest blessings belong to the 
category of the little hills. If we are looking for 
help and peace from great things only, we are 
missing much that is in store for us. 

There are so many unappreciated blessings in 



66 The Art of Sailing On 

life, so many unappropriated sources of happiness. 
If any of us would sit down to think of these it 
would be an astonishment to us. Our trouble often 
is that we count only the blessings that we can see 
very plainly — the mountains. There are many lit- 
tle hills beside the mountains. There are unnoticed 
helps and forces in life, and not a few of them are 
rich with God's goodness for us. If we would 
take the trouble to look for the unnoticed, to dis- 
cover the neglected and forgotten things of life, 
many of us would grow rich by these. Years ago 
in the Western silver mines men thought they could 
afford to be careless of the smaller values because 
the ores were so rich and so plentiful. So they 
used the ores of highest percentage and threw the 
lower ones on the dump. Of late years they have 
grown wiser. New methods of extracting silver 
have been invented, so that even the poorer ores 
can be used. Now the miners are going back to 
those same dump-heaps and finding riches there 
such as were not before suspected. 

None of us can afford to pass by the lesser values. 
Lesser values often grow into great riches. For 
this reason it is true that men may often find great 
joy in life by going back over the way and finding 
where they missed or failed to appropriate some 
source of blessing. We need a little closer scrutiny 



The Ministry of the Little Hills 67 

of the way, a little sharper vision for the unno- 
ticed, a little finer appreciation of the smaller 
values. 

Two men were walking one day in a botanical 
garden. The one went on his way, seeing and ad- 
miring the garden and rejoicing in the great flowers 
that were there. The other had a keener sight, 
and he was looking for the flowers that hid them- 
selves in the corners and bloomed in the shadows. 
Suddenly he stooped to look at a poor little flower 
that shrank away in a dark place. He had never 
seen it before, but he had been looking for it for 
many years, and he was very happy. I wonder if it 
is not true that life would be more joyous for us if 
we would but keep looking for those little flowers 
that grow in quiet places and dark places and places 
that are out of the way? 

" And the little hills." It may be that this bit 
of a text out of the Psalm will help us to pay more 
attention to things obscure and unpromising in this 
world. For in a world like ours the blessings of 
life are often hidden away in deep shadows and 
are found like rare flowers in unfrequented path- 
ways. Where the trodden paths are, where the 
world is always looking on and looking in, joy 
often seems to wither away. 

How many unnamed and unlisted blessings are 



68 The Art of Sailing On 

at work to bring peace to our lives ! I believe In 
the providence of God because I am aware that 
I am upheld every day and hour by great and 
strong forces of life that are like the girders of 
a bridge beneath my feet. But there is even a more 
striking evidence of providence than this. It is in 
the fact that hundreds and thousands of little aids 
and forces, unknown and mysterious ministries, un- 
calendared, unlisted personalities, are busy in the 
shadows of life, helping me to live. The ministry 
of the unknown ! — this is one meaning of the little 
hills that bring peace to the people. When you 
sit down to con over the things that help your 
manhood or your womanhood to blossom into the 
best, you will recall all of the prominent and obvi- 
ous forces, of course; but do not fail to give a 
little thought to the ministry of the unknown. 

How it enriches and enlarges our life to think 
from day to day of the unseen forces and aids 
that are ministering to us in life ! There are days 
when we feel very poor and very weak and very 
lonesome in the world. All the great powers have 
gone away; the mountains are covered with mist. 
But there are the little hills, the minor ministries 
and helps of life. There is never an hour in which 
the soul, however bereft of the great forces, is not 
still buoyed up by silent and less obvious strength. 



The Ministry of the Little Hills 69 

Such, for example, is the comfort of prayer. Many 
a man who has lost sight of the mountains in his 
life has been comforted by the memory of some 
one's prayer, though it may have been only the 
prayer of a little child. A friend of mine went 
into a hotel and picked up from the writing table 
an unfinished letter, evidently written by an erring 
man to his wife and child at home. The letter ran 
on in painful sentences until it spoke of the prayers 
of the wife and child — there it stopped. The little 
hills shall bring peace to the people ! 

Blessed are those little comradeships of life that 
feed our courage and minister to us indirectly and 
silently of the strength of life! Many a man is 
inspired and strengthened thus to breast the storm 
by the quiet woman at his side. And many a man 
is made a better man daily out there in the fierce 
battle of life by the memory of a child's voice and 
a child's light touch upon his hand. " A little child 
shall lead them." 

God's ministry to us through little children — 
what a precious thing it is! A gentleman told me 
the other day that it was the coming of a little 
child into his life that had made the world a new 
place. Formerly he had not noticed that the world 
is full of little children nor had he cared for them. 
When a man has a child of his own, there is all 



70 The Art of Sailing On 

the difference in the world. Things in the world 
have new meanings. The problems are here still, 
but they are not so grave, not so hard. Unseen 
strength seems to come even through the weakness 
of a little child. A man buckles on his armor and 
says, " Now I must fight with new faith and new 
courage ! " The little hills bring peace. It is 
George Macdonald who tells us: " The blessedness 
of life depends upon its interest, not upon its com- 
fort." And it is infallibly true that they who de- 
spise not the little hills shall find wonderful com- 
fort. 

11 And the little hills." It is worth our while 
also to-day to see how little duties and minor ap- 
plications of the large truths of the Gospel are 
comfortable to the soul. Oh ! that is a discovery 
worth making, that a slight duty done with great 
faithfulness is one of the little hills that send down 
peace into the soul. Many of us must have made 
this discovery long ago. Often our lives are sin- 
gularly bare of comfort and of joy, and we look 
abroad and say, " All the mountains are shrouded 
in mist." In such an hour you can see none of 
the great consolations of life. Friendship closes 
its doors. Religion itself seems unfriendly and far 
away. Yet if in the soul there is the consciousness 
of some small duty of life splendidly done, the soul 



The Ministry of the Little Hills 71 

may still look up and rejoice in the comfort of the 
little hills. 

Let us learn to bring our religion down to minor 
duties and to many less obvious activities. A man's 
religion may not enable him to testify before a mul- 
titude, but if it help him to live gently and help- 
fully in his own home, what a source of joy is that ! 
Our Gospel is a faith that should reach to the 
words and manners of men. It is a faith to make 
the husband a strong man in his own household and 
the wife a gracious reliance. It is a faith to give 
the children a wondrous vision and to cause them 
to be glad in the presence of their parents. It is 
a faith also to make the heart tender, and the an- 
swer of the lips soft, and the pressure of the hand 
warm, and the light of the eyes friendly and lov- 
ing. Bring religion down to the level of the little 
hills. It will distil peace in the home and peace 
among men. 

But this truth we are echoing to-day about the 
little hills is a reversible truth. If our lives are 
blessed and strengthened in these ways, are we not 
also to bless and strengthen others? Many men 
soothe their sense of obligation by reminding them- 
selves that they have little power or influence with 
men. " It is not for me," they say, " to help other 
men; I lack the power to help." You mean by 



72 The Art of Sailing On 

that that you cannot help in obvious ways; you can- 
not bring direct aid to men. This may be true. It 
may be that your life is not a mountain of strength 
and comfort to other men. 

Even so there are the little hills that bring peace 
to men. There are scores of indirect influences 
that feed the courage of men. A man may say of 
his life as a Christian for instance, " I am afraid 
that I do not count for very much. I am very far 
from perfect; my Christian life seems very feeble; 
my Christian testimony surely does not reach very 
far." This may be true. Nevertheless the fact 
that you are trying, that you are willing to be 
counted on God's side — that is an indirect influence 
that is not to be overlooked. The fact that you 
have made a decision for the Kingdom of God and 
recorded it with your name upon the pages of a 
Christian church, who shall say what influence this 
act of yours may start in the world? 

When the Apostle Peter went through the streets 
of Jerusalem it was thought that his shadow falling 
upon sick folk would make them well. The life of 
every man has its shadow — his indirect influence 
that falls updn the way. We are all of us probably 
called to feed the courage and the faith of others 
in ways unseen. If we grow weak and our faith 
falters, others are losers thereby. But if our faith 



The Ministry of the Little Hills 73 

is strong and our eye looks out unfalteringly upon 
the world, some other heart will pluck up courage 
and go on with fresh strength upon his way. Al- 
most the worst heresy a Christian can be guilty of is 
the heresy of doubting his possible influence in the 
Kingdom of God. 

We are called to be comrades to men and to help 
them to know the peace and power of God. A 
little bit of love goes a great way in a world like 
ours, especially if it be shot through and through 
by faith. It is uplifting love that the world needs, 
strengthening love, the love that comes down out 
of the high places into the lowly places and takes 
hold upon human need. Our Lord's love was of 
that kind, when he " must needs " go through Sa- 
maria in order that he might meet a woman at the 
well and uplift her by love. 

" There are many kinds of love, 

As many kinds of light, 
And every kind of love 

Makes a glory in the night. 
There is love that stirs the heart 

And love that gives it rest, 
But the love that leads life upward 

Is the noblest and the best." 

Blessed are they who practise the comradeship 
of love to their fellow-men ! They are as little hills 



74 The Art of Sailing. On 

that distil peace among the people. And blessed 
are they also who send peace into the world by 
their own kindly spirit, and by their quiet, helpful 
kindliness of deed ! There is nothing very obvious 
or great or prominent about kindness. It is no 
mountain rearing itself with lofty front before 
men. No, it is a little hill. It stands in a quiet 
place and it casts a modest shadow. Nevertheless 
there is no hour in which it does not send peace 
among the people. 

" Lord, give me this to find, 
How to be kind — 
This heaven-born art 
Of Thee a part. 

" Small gift have I beside, 
But this is deep and wide — 
Pregnant with power to reach 
All men in speech. 

" God, give us this to know, 
That we may show 
A world that is so blind 
How to be kind." 

What a deep secret of life is this! And when 
we have found it, peace is multiplied in our own 



The Ministry of the Little Hills 75 

hearts. Is it not a truthful poet who says of " The 
Reward of Service " : 

" A child's kiss 
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad : 
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich: 
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong: 
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
Of service which thou renderest " ? 

And this is an echo only of the great sentence of 
our Lord, who, having helped a human soul, de- 
clared, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." 

A book with a strange title was published a lit- 
tle while ago. It is called " Everybody's Lone- 
some." It is being spoken of as a masterpiece, not 
because it is great or strong, but because it is sim- 
ple and true. It is a sweet and artless tale of a 
young girl who, being full of discontent, won her 
way to happiness by finding out a wonderful se- 
cret. The secret was this : " Just remember, 
everybody's lonesome." 

Yes, it is a lonesome world despite the multitudes 
that are everywhere. It is the little comradeships 
of life that all of us need. It is the smaller graces 
of gentleness and kindness, and of goodly speech 
and behavior, that the world craves. It is the cour- 
age, not so much of great men, but of average men, 



76 The Art of Sailing On 

that feeds our courage. It is the faith, not of 
perfect men, but of fallible men, men who are strug- 
gling, and winning sometimes doubtful victories — 
it is the faith of these that helps. It is the bit of 
love that is not brilliant, but that goes a great way, 
that travels without weariness — it is love of this 
kind that uplifts. " The mountains shall bring 
peace to the people, and the little hills." Remem- 
ber the little hills ! 



CHRIST CALLING MEN 



He salth unto them, Come, and ye shall see. 

John i : 39. 



V 
CHRIST CALLING MEN 

The first chapter of John's Gospel is a chapter 
of knowledge and thrill. There are scenes and 
incidents here that have become an indissoluble part 
of the world's thought. There are phrases and 
sentences here that have become a part of the spirit- 
ual vocabulary of men for all time. 

" Behold the Lamb of God," " Come and ye 
shall see," " Findeth his own brother," " Brought 
him unto Jesus," and that masterful call of Jesus, 
" Follow me " — these are not mere stock, expres- 
sions of Christianity; they are integral and vital 
expressions of the interest of Jesus Christ in men 
and the interest of men in Jesus Christ. 

To all men who are concerned for the spiritual 
welfare of the world this chapter, written by John, 
the fisherman of Galilee, must rank in importance 
above even England's Magna Charta or America's 
Declaration of Independence. It is in every way 
a human document of profoundest interest to men. 

79 



80 The Art of Sailing On 

The absorbing thing in this chapter is the story 
it tells of the Man of Nazareth beginning to gather 
about himself a group of men who were to be the 
protagonists of the Christian Gospel. See how it 
came about. There was a certain day when Jesus 
came to meet a man, a strange, rude, yet forceful 
character, a man who had already been preaching 
tremendously about righteousness. When this man 
saw Jesus he spoke out immediately and spontane- 
ously, "Behold the Lamb of God!" This was 
the calling of John the Baptist, who, though he 
was not permanently of the group of men that sur- 
rounded Jesus, gave to his Gospel nevertheless the 
advantage of his strong initiative and his intense 
loyalty. 

It was on the next day after that John repeated 
his testimony to Jesus in the presence of two of his 
own disciples, and they began to follow Jesus. As 
they were following him, Jesus turned and ad- 
dressed a question to them: " What seek ye? " to 
which they replied, " Where abidest thou? " And 
Jesus said to them, " Come, and ye shall see." How 
natural, even commonplace, this meeting was. The 
result of the invitation was that they went with 
Jesus to his abode and spent two hours with the 
Son of Man. What was said in that interview is 
not recorded in the Gospel, but the interview was 



Christ Calling Men 8i 

conclusive with the two men, and they became his 
disciples. It is one of the unwritten conversations 
of history that has weight and value to this hour. 

One of the two was Andrew. His subsequent 
history is not fully written for us. It is not proba- 
ble that he became eminent, but it is recorded of 
him on more than one occasion — and an honorable 
record it is — that he brought others to his Master. 

The other one of the two was undoubtedly John. 
He does not record his own name, but it is a clear 
inference. In winning this man to himself Jesus 
secured a disciple who has added such spiritual 
riches to the world as no man can compute. Think 
for a moment of the place this Gospel narrative 
by John the apostle has in the affection of the whole 
world. Though he was a rude Galilean fisherman, 
he was a diamond in the rough, and his contact with 
Jesus polished and brightened his very soul until 
it shone with uncommon brilliancy. His zeal was 
unflagging and his devotion was monumental. He 
was a man of violent, even thunderous temper, 
therefore Jesus called him and his brother James 
Boanerges, " sons of thunder." But the gentleness 
of Jesus possessed him until his love burned like 
a steady flame, and to this day the Church preserves 
the tradition that when he was an old man of 
ninety in Ephesus, he went about among the dis- 



82 The Art of Sailing On 

ciples murmuring always one sentence, " Little 
children, love one another." Late in life he wrote 
out his story of the life of his Lord, mingling with 
it his feelings and experiences, so that the fourth 
Gospel, besides being a biography, is also a per- 
sonal recital of what Jesus was to John himself. 

Again towards the end of his life his faith 
flashed out in those great spectacular visions of the 
book of Revelation, the center and sum of which 
is, " Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the 
sin of the world " securely established upon the 
throne of the universe. 

It was a wonderful day indeed in the opening 
ministry of Jesus when he won two such disciples 
as Andrew and John ! 

And the next day was wonderful, too, because it 
brought to his standard the disciple whom we know 
and admire, despite his faults, as Simon Peter. An- 
drew his brother found him and " brought him to 
Jesus." The moment Jesus saw him he divined 
the possibilities that were in him and said to him, 
11 Thou art Simon, the son of John. Thou shalt 
be called Cephas, which is by interpretation Peter." 
He was destined to a troublous history. There 
were elements of weakness in his nature that were 
certain to appear, but there were also great and 
solid elements of power. 



Christ Calling Men 83 

When Jesus fully possessed this vigorous, virile 
man, Simon Peter, he became a flaming torch, a 
voice unhindered, a heart unpent, and there is little 
reason to doubt the tradition that at last he suffered 
martyrdom by crucifixion, with his head downward, 
in behalf of his Lord whom three times he had 
denied. 

And the next day Jesus added another man to 
his enlarging group. He found him in Galilee 
and his name was Philip. He spoke but one simple 
sentence to him: "Follow me," and it was suf- 
ficient. There are some men who respond to the 
call of Christ immediately, whensoever he has a 
real opportunity to speak to them. They recognize 
it as the " one clear call " that comes to the soul. 
There are others who hesitate and postpone for 
years before they heed his call, and there are 
still others who live all their days in the same 
world that was graced by the presence of that glori- 
ous Person, and that echoes still with the sound 
of his voice, but never really heed his call. What 
losses through lack of promptness ! 

We remember Philip especially as the disciple 
who answered the call promptly. He was equally 
prompt in setting to work, and the first trophy that 
he brought to Jesus was Nathanael, a man whose 
heart was already touched and whose mind was 



84 The Art of Sailing On 

filled with vague longings and inquiries about spirit- 
ual things. Only he did not understand himself, 
as many of us do not understand ourselves in the 
eagerness but sometimes contradictoriness and 
doubt of our own minds. What Jesus did for Na- 
thanael is what he will often do for men, flash in 
upon their intellectual and spiritual bewilderment 
the light of his own true presence. Nathanael an- 
swered and said unto him, " Rabbi, thou art the 
King of Israel!" 

Thus we see it is a chapter of beginnings. The 
first disciples, six in number, including John the 
Baptist, are won. A group of persons assembles 
about the central Person, and with this little com- 
pany the Gospel moves out into the world. Let 
us therefore repeat the statement already made, that 
this chapter is a greater document than the Magna 
Charta or the Declaration of Independence. 

There are several useful lessons to be learned. 

Jesus called men about him in arranging this 
first group of his disciples. We speak no deroga- 
tory word concerning women. Women have a 
large place in these early Gospel records, as they 
have in the whole history of the Church of Christ. 
Nevertheless there is no woman's name in this first 
chapter of John. Jesus is calling men and their 
names are recorded here in indelible ink. Appar- 



Christ Calling Men 85 

ently there was no doubt of the application of the 
Gospel to men. It was masculine enough for An- 
drew and Peter and John, and we can hardly sus- 
pect them of effeminacy. In these early records 
men came freely to Christ, as they may still do. 
The rich young ruler came with his anxious though 
selfish fears. Nicodemus came with his mind in- 
flamed by interrogation points. The Pharisees and 
scribes came also, because, like the moth, they could 
not resist the attraction of the light. 

And Jesus had his own method with each of 
these men. Sometimes it was an invitation to in- 
vestigation and fellowship: "Come and see." 
Again it was an immediate and direct appeal: 
" Follow me." Again it was a searchlight thrown 
in upon the inner life of a man: " Behold an Is- 
raelite in whom there is no guile." Or again it 
was an appeal to the best that was in a man : " Thou 
shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation 
Peter." What wondrous ways he had with men ! 
" He himself knew what was in man." 

You will notice, too, that he called and won to 
himself different types of men. Contrast Andrew 
and Peter, sons of the same mother, and yet, in 
that striking diversity which nature often brings 
into the same household, as different from one an- 
other as an agate from a pearl. Yet Jesus won 



86 The Art of Sailing On 

them both to himself. Men will often excuse them- 
selves. They will say, " I seem to be different from 
other men; I am of another type; these things do 
not much appeal to me." But Jesus Christ comes 
with his call to all men. There is nothing in you 
or in me that he cannot reach. He passes by no 
type of man, skeptic, moralist, indifferentist, the 
curious, the inquiring, the sinful. He has about 
him a universality, a breadth of adaptation, a depth 
of appeal, which includes every human type. He 
is not a son of man, but the Son of Man, and it may 
be no mere guess of ours that the twelve whom he 
called about him for his ministry represented every 
original type of humanity. All these Jesus called 
and won to himself — and held them all except that 
one whose halo has faded into darkness because he 
loved, not his Master, but himself. 

Now there is a question we ought to ask at this 
point : What was it that drew men to Jesus Christ ? 
— what is it now? You have noticed what he said 
to those first inquirers. It was nothing profound 
or philosophical at all, only a simple invitation, 
11 Come and see." They said, " Master, where 
dwellest thou? " And this was his answer. There 
is something in Jesus himself that draws men. We 
can ask the old question, " Who art thou, Jesus of 
Nazareth? " and the question comes echoing back 



Christ Calling Men 87 

across the ages unanswered and unanswerable. At 
least the answer cannot be put into words, neither 
into documents nor creeds nor theologies. You re- 
quire not the botanist's knowledge to enjoy the rose, 
nor the architect's skill to rejoice in the cathedral, 
nor the rare talent and technique of the musician to 
feel the spell of music. 

It is not the words, the speech, the sermons of 
Jesus alone that tell us what he is. Of him we 
have to say almost at times, despite the charm and 
impressiveness of his words that hang like music 
on the ear, " What thou art speaks so loudly that 
I cannot hear what thou sayest." On that day 
when John the Baptist met him face to face there 
leaped up within his rugged breast a flame of rec- 
ognition, and out spoke his strong voice in words 
that can never pass from our memory: " Behold 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world!" What secret is this in Jesus that calls 
men and draws them to himself? Napoleon medi- 
tated upon this at St. Helena. One day after read- 
ing in the New Testament he said to his attendant: 
" I know men and I know that Jesus Christ must 
be more than a man. Great generals and I myself 
have been able to command men by their presence. 
But Jesus Christ is able to reach across the chasm 
of centuries and draw them to himself." 



88 The Art of Sailing On 

What secret is this in Jesus that calls men? Let 
us try to state it, however imperfectly. 

Was it not that these forces that were in him, 
in calling men, did not merely call but also went 
out after men to seek them? " The Son of Man 
is come to seek." 

We have known noble personalities that lacked 
nevertheless in the power of search: nothing in 
them went out to seek men. With Jesus it is other- 
wise. Not only is he " full of grace and truth," 
but all this wholesome power that resides in his 
sacred, divine Person sets out upon the trail of 
men. It is a searchlight sweeping across the dark- 
ness of our ofttimes barren life. It is a magnet 
commanding the iron filings of our resistant nature 
to respond. It is the noble music of a great voice 
awakening our very life within us. 

Are we not approaching a little the secret of his 
call? Something infinitely truthful about Jesus 
calls men, and in their hearts they understand him 
when he says, " I am the Truth." Something pro- 
foundly sacrificial about him, even before his Cross 
is lifted, calls men, and they know his meaning 
when he says, " I am the Way." Something inde- 
scribably powerful about him, that reaches down 
into the very being, calls men, and they appreciate 
it when he says, " I am the Life." 



Christ Calling Men 89 

" No fable old or mystic lore, 

Nor dream of bards and seers, 
No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years. 

" But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
A present Help is he ; 
And faith has still its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 

" The healing of his seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain: 
We touch him in life's throng and press, 
And we are whole again." 

It has been left to a gifted author of our day to 
paint in imperishable literature his picture of " A 
Doctor of the Old School." You remember the 
story in " The Bonnie Brier Bush," how William 
MacLure traveled the country over ministering to 
the sick, how he breasted the floods and fought the 
fever by sheer endurance, and never knew that he 
was a hero. Once when Saunders was so very ill 
of the fever, the old doctor and Drumsheugh toiled 
all the night with two weapons, milk to keep up 
the patient's strength, and water from the spring 
to cool the fever. Oh, that is like Jesus Christ! 
He is always seeking men with infinite pains. He 



90 The Art of Sailing On 

gave himself to his work. He spared not his own 
self. Men knew that there was naught that he 
would not do to help a man and win him to him- 
self. So it is that he calls. 

Let us see this also with great clearness, that 
Christ's call to men is the kind of a call that reaches 
every man's greatest need. If Nathanael has 
doubts, he is calling to Nathanael. If Peter has 
great weaknesses and great forces contending in his 
pent-up nature, he is calling to Peter. If John the 
Baptist has a great rugged faith, albeit an unedu- 
cated faith, and some fears, he is calling to John 
the Baptist. If any man has any struggle or 
temptation, any history of his own heart that he 
cannot tell, any secret longings of his soul or any 
great sense of need in himself, Jesus Christ calls 
him that way — calls him down deep in his own 
nature, down where the need lies, or the fear, or the 
doubt, or the sin. There are solitary places in the 
mountains that men seldom see, so there are soli- 
tary places in life, and Jesus calls us in that solitude. 
His call is not like any ordinary call. 

And when men listen to Jesus Christ speaking 
to that deep something in them that needs him, 
when they heed his invitation, " Come and see," 
then they believe. And belief is one of the sweetest 
things, one of the strongest things, that ever comes 



Christ Calling Men 91 

to a strong man. There is no real living without 
belief. Even the literature of doubt has no 
premium upon it. The world wants your convic- 
tions, not your doubts. You sit at your desk and 
speak to a man away yonder in Pittsburg or Chi- 
cago, and you can do that because there have been 
men who pressed through the thickets of their 
doubts and reached beliefs. Christ is calling men 
to believe, and he is calling them to a great thing. 
Happy indeed is the man who can say like this — 

" If Jesus Christ is a man — 
And only a man — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him 
And to him I will cleave alway. 

" If Jesus Christ is a God — 
And the only God — I swear 
I will follow him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea, and the air." 

So this lesson out of the first chapter of John's 
Gospel is mainly a lesson for men. May men take 
it to heart to-day. A more honorable career no 
man could desire than to be a follower of Jesus 
Christ. His work is so colossal, too, and the world 
needs it so much. If the world should lose Jesus 
Christ, or lose any part of his work or influence, 



92 The Art of Sailing On 

new sorrows would come upon the world. Strong 
men ought to help his cause and count it a joy to 
link their names with his. If there is an ounce of 
energy, a strain of life's music, a glint of love, 
an iota of passionate devotion that we can give to 
him, let us give, and give it freely. Let us live 
close enough to him to know and share his spirit 
and to reproduce it to the world. 

This is what it must mean to hear him calling 
and to become his disciple. 



A WORLD OF SONG 



" And when they had sung a hymn, they went 
out into the Mount of Olives." 

Matt. 26:30. 



VI 

A WORLD OF SONG 

" When they had sung a hymn." Our world is 
a world of song. If it were not so, sin would soon 
gain the upper hand. God's creatures everywhere, 
high and low, are susceptible to the power of music. 
Right well have men spoken when they have de- 
scribed it as " the divine art," for is it not sug- 
gestive of "the divinity that stirs within us"? 
Very beautiful indeed is the providence that has left 
in our sin-begirt humanity the capacity to feel the 
majesty and power of music. Sufficient proof, this, 
that God never intends to give this world over to a 
reprobate condition. The Germans even say that 
bad people do not have songs, such is the confidence 
of one nation in the heaven-born origin and influ- 
ence of the art. The history of music, could we 
follow it in detail, would show a double truth, that 
civilization has grown with the development of 
music, and music has developed with the expansion 
of civilization. It has been one of those subtler 

95 



g6 The Art of Sailing On 

influences that has wrought a quiet refinement in the 
soul of man. 

It is God himself who is the great Tone-Master 
and Director, who will work out through many dis- 
cords, many disenchantments, many breakings of 
instruments even, an ultimate divine harmony. 

That this world of ours is a world of song is 
evident first of all from the fact that nature is full 
of music. A beloved teacher of ours, long since 
gone to join those who " handle the harp and the 
organ " in a higher sphere, had a favorite lecture 
on " The Music of Nature." His was a sensitive 
soul and he heard harmonies everywhere, in the 
cricket's chirp, in the hum of the bees, in the whirr- 
ing of the partridge, in the swish of the farmer's 
scythe, in the click of the cottage gate at night. 
It is a proof of a certain refined sensibility to have 
an ear for the music of nature, and they are to be 
congratulated who are able to hear the tuneful 
voices of God's lower creatures. How often in- 
deed our poets and musicians seek to carry this 
music of nature over into their rhythmic verse and 
tuneful melody. They have even invented a great, 
high-sounding word, taken from the Greek, to de- 
scribe this kind of poetry. It is onomatopoetic, by 
which is meant the reproduction of sound in words, 
like buzz and hum and whirr and whippoorwill. 



A World of Song 97 

In nature, too, there is noticeable appreciation of 
music. The dull toad even can be whistled out 
from his dark retreat and will lie in listening rap- 
ture under the spell of low, sweet sound. Try it 
and seel A quartet stood up to sing in the prac- 
tice hour. Above the head of the tenor was a 
spider's filmy cable, down which the unsightly in- 
sect had crept so that he hung but a short distance 
above the singer's head. Watching the movements 
of the spider, it was discovered that at the high 
notes of the tenor's voice the spider crept up a 
certain distance, while the low tones brought him 
invariably down again. Such measured sensitive- 
ness to sound is often met with in the lower orders 
of creation. 

Three hundred and twenty vibrations per second 
of the delicate filmy wings make the not too wel- 
come music of the common house fly, and the fly 
sings, it is said, always in the key of F. The first 
chirp of the robin or the bluebird in the spring — 
how quickly the door of the heart flies open at the 
sound ! The frogs that sang in the old pond near 
the farmhouse — sometimes you can hear them still, 
though years have fled. 

" The music in my heart I bore 
Long after it was heard no more." 



98 The Art of Sailing On 

Hold the sea-shell to the ear — that is Old 
Ocean's music reduced to the compass and capacity 
of the human ear. Sailors say that the sea is full 
of fairies and spirits that make the noises of the 
waves. 

And the echo! What elusive, vanishing music 
is that! The Hebrews called it " the laughter of 
the voice." There is an echo in Ireland that re- 
peats everything three tones lower, another that 
repeats a word seven times in the day-time and 
twenty times at night. An echo in Russia repeats 
one word a hundred times, and one in Algiers re- 
peats it a thousand times. There is music in the 
air, too. French scientists ascended in a balloon 
above the clouds at early morning and heard the 
sounds made by the air in process of heating by the 
sun, like a great ^olian harp. The ancients be- 
lieved and spoke of the music of the spheres. In 
the book of Job the poet refers to the time when 
" the morning stars sang together." 

We have read of the statue of Memnon, which 
was said to give out musical sound at sunrise when 
the sunbeams fell upon it. Those early peoples 
felt the power of music and tried to describe it in 
their mythology. Orpheus played upon his instru- 
ment and drew rocks and trees after him. Apollo 
played his lyre at the building of Troy and charmed 



A World of Song 99 

great blocks of stone, which moved themselves into 
place. 

Nature is a symphony, with the Creator as Con- 
ductor. Even a child will often catch the sound 
of it and become thoughtful. " Hear him sing," 
said a child who heard a catbird in the trees. " Did 
he eat the flowers to make him sing so? " 

It is man himself, God's highest creature, who is 
the great musician of the world, both making music 
and loving it. Hence all this variety in the music 
world — sopranos, altos, tenors, basses, instruments, 
tones, half-tones, staffs, measures, bars, majors, 
minors, chords, times, arias, choruses, solos, can- 
tatas, symphonies. Most of us know these only 
by name, but they proclaim the truth that this is 
a world of song, and that man most of all has music 
in his soul. 

Music makes an atmosphere of purity: let us 
note this by way of recognizing its ethical value. 
It is, so to say, like those medicines that preoccupy 
the body against disease : it is prophylactic. " Let 
me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who 
writes its laws." If there were time to speak of 
how men and nations have been inspired to sing in 
times of danger, it would be indeed an interesting 
story. Think of what the " Marseillaise Hymn " 
has done for France, of what the " Wacht am 



ioo The Art of Sailing On 

Rhein " has been to the Germans. Cromwell's 
" Ironsides " sang the great heroic Psalms of David 
and marched on to victory. Lord Wolseley wrote 
in the Preface to the "Soldier's Song Book": 
" Troops that sing as they march will reach their 
destination more quickly and in better fighting con- 
dition than those who march in silence." There is 
a volume of sermons in the Field Marshal's sen- 
tence. Let us not march " in silence." For this 
reason the German army contains more than ten 
thousand military musicians, able-bodied men, who 
might have been soldiers. Scotch military history 
could not be written without the story of the bag- 
pipe. 

Music helps men to bear their burdens. In the 
Orient men carry very heavy burdens, but they 
have learned to sing away their heaviness. On the 
Nile the boatmen sing as they pull away at the 
heavy oars of the boat. It is a strange, mirthful 
song that they are singing, and they seem to forget 
their toil. When it is interpreted we learn that 
it is a song about the Ark, and the animals one 
after another entering Noah's venturesome craft. 

But if instances like these teach us to meet toil 
with song, our Lord's example tells us also to meet 
suffering with song. For on the night before his 
crucifixion he led his disciples before they went out 



A World of Song ioi 

to the Mount of Olives in singing the Psalms of 
praise — the Hallel — which the Jews invariably 
used in celebrating the Passover. Some have held 
that music is truest when it is the child of suffer- 
ing. A pupil went to a great teacher to be taught 
how to sing. But the teacher said, " You cannot 
sing. Go away, and when you have suffered some- 
what come back and I will teach you to sing." 

It was Luther who said that " the Devil hates 
music," for when men begin to sing, visions of 
purity begin to arise in them, imperceptible influ- 
ences steal over them, and there is an unseen cable 
drawing them upward towards the sky. Singers 
and players may sometimes be insincere, but music 
itself is always sincere; it is always calling men to 
a higher level. If a man will learn a noble song, 
and sing that song often as he goes on in life, he 
will be a better man always. 

Music has a power of indirection too that makes 
its influence pervasive. Wherever men sing good 
songs, other men are safe, and women too. Where 
there are bad songs, woman's virtue even must be- 
ware. If the story of the unconscious influence of 
song could be written it would fill many volumes. 

A college president, wearied in body and mind, 
had gone to the mountains for rest. Walking 
along the mountainsides in the twilight, his ears 



102 The Art of Sailing On 

caught the strain of a sweet song, " Saviour, more 
than life to me." By and by a cow appeared in 
the distance; then a maiden driving it home to the 
milking, and singing on the way; then a turn in the 
path and they were hidden again, but the music still 
floated up to the tired man. It rested and refreshed 
him and gave him new courage. But the mountain 
milkmaid never knew that she had helped a man 
to do his great work in the world. Let us sing our 
song in the world, sing it in faith, sing it in hope, 
sing it out upon the air! Some tired heart may 
find rest and peace even within the sound of your 
poor song or mine. 

In your own experience probably music has 
moved you more often than sermons or prayers. 
There is some old hymn of the Church that always 
speaks to you instantly and irresistibly. Perchance 
it is your mother's hymn. It is the anthem that 
wafted some dear one out of the world, or the 
hymn that marked some strong event or crisis of 
your life. 

Oh, if Jesus and his disciples sang their hymn 
in Jerusalem, the disciples of that same faith must 
keep on singing! It is a singing religion ! Sing not 
less, but more. Sing more truly, more feelingly, 
more reverently, more worshipfully. Sing the soul 
into better moods. Sing the mind out of its sor- 



A World of Song 103 

didness up to higher things. Sing the world away 
from its sin and care. Let psalms and hymns and 
spiritual songs run through the mind like water 
cleansing a vessel. Let the heart make melody 
within. 

" Songs have power to quiet 
The restless pulse of care, 
And come like the benediction 
That follows after prayer." 

We are singing old songs now, but it shall not 
always be so, for this Word of God tells us that 
one day we shall sing " a new song." Let us make 
ready to sing that new song, the Song of Moses and 
the Lamb. For surely we must know that if this 
world with all its sin and care is a world of song, 
that other world to which we are going will fairly 
burst with song. 

" The tides of Music's Golden Sea 
Are setting toward Eternity." 



OUR OWN RIVERS 



"Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of 
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " 

II Kings 5:12. 



VII 
OUR OWN RIVERS 

It is an impressive fact, and quite as useful as 
it is impressive, that men have the power to feel 
at home in this great world. Vast as it is, a place 
of magnificent distances, this world is nevertheless 
our home. We are not to remain always here; we 
are sojourners; nevertheless while we are on this 
planet it is well to cultivate the home-instinct. Re- 
ligious teachers often tell us that we should not 
feel too much at home in this world. It is perilous, 
they say. With the apostle of the New Testament 
they warn us: "Love not the world, neither the 
things that are in the world." This injunction is 
both timely and true, yet we cannot think that it 
militates against the duty of being at home in the 
world. 

If one would realize the value of the home in- 
stinct, and the duty of feeling at home in this great 
world, let him recall some one who has lived with- 
out the home feeling. Quite familiar are the signs 
of this — a certain dulness of feeling and lack of 
107 



108 The Art of Sailing On 

verve, a certain absence of attachment to locality 
and lack of loyalty to place, a certain wanderlust 
of the mind that carries one ever away into regions 
beyond. In the presence of such signs we are quick 
to conclude that the Bible never means by its warn- 
ings to counsel men to disattach themselves from 
the world or to cherish feelings of disloyalty to it. 
This world is our home, albeit we are but sojourn- 
ers here, and it is our privilege to love our home 
and to make the most of it. 

Out of this home-instinct flow some of our most 
useful feelings, especially those sociable feelings of 
the soul that establish relations of familiarity and 
fellowship with men and things. Have we stopped 
to consider how many of the real joys and utilities 
of life come from the home-feeling that we have 
here in the world? If any of us are cherishing in 
our hearts, as indeed we ought to do, any bit of 
sentiment about old friends or about the old home ; 
if memory recalls now and then a feeling for some 
early scene or locality, an old well or an old wall, 
or an old house or a pathway through the woods, 
or so intangible a thing even as the sound of a 
church bell — is it not plain that these sweet and 
tender influences of life are the product of the 
home- feeling? The truth is that we ought to be 
intensely loyal to our world-home. The Heavenly 



Our Own Rivers 109 

Father has made it for us: through long tracts of 
time his loving care was occupied in fitting up our 
home. The world has beauty: he has made it. 
The strength of the mountains is his, the song of 
the bird in the valleys is his, and the " spell of the 
wheat " on the undulating plains is his. The rivers 
also are the rivers of God, for he has made them 
to flow. " And God saw everything that he had 
made, and, behold, it was very good." Into the 
midst of all this God called his children, made in 
his own image, bidding them to subdue the earth 
and have dominion over it. So deep are the roots 
of this home-instinct which we find in our hearts, 
and which grow sometimes into bitter fruit, but 
more often into many joys of life ! 

Considering all this, we are ready to make a 
half apology for Naaman the Syrian who spoke 
forth so hastily about the rivers of his own land : 
" Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Da- 
mascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " We 
do not forget what is commonly said about him, 
that his pride stood in the way of his welfare, that 
it was wrong and hurtful for him to despise Jordan 
because it was little and muddy, and in short that 
he was a bigot as to his own country and his own 
things, who would not humble himself to any level 
beneath that of his own pride. The trouble was 



no The Art of Sailing On 

that he wanted his own terms, that he would not 
surrender to God's way as represented by the in- 
structions of the prophet, just as there are those 
now who will not humble themselves as little chil- 
dren and come to God upon terms of penitence and 
forgiveness for sin. We hold no brief for Naa- 
man. The indictment against his hurtful pride 
must stand. 

Nevertheless there is a ring of something fa- 
miliar and friendly about his words: "Are not 
Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, bet- 
ter than all the waters of Israel?" There is a 
touch of that home-feeling in the world to which 
we have just referred, and a bit of that sentiment 
for places and things which rightly used is a very 
helpful thing in life. One can understand his feel- 
ing and venture even to appreciate his hesitation. 
And while this is no apology for what sounds at 
once like blustering pride and boasting, it is at 
least an open door in the direction of something 
that has real value for us all. And though the 
lesson be an indirect one, it is none the less a useful 
one. 

Shall then a man not be fond of his own rivers, 
the Abanah and Pharpar of his own Damascus? 
Who would not cherish at least a bit of sentiment 
about the rivers of his own land? Lay blame to 



Our Own Rivers hi 

the Syrian captain, if you will, because of his stub- 
born pride ; but do not fail to credit him also with 
a romantic attachment to his own familiar places, 
to the rivers of his own land. 

It is a thing to be deplored to be lacking in senti- 
ment. He who is devoid of sentiment goes through 
life with few romantic attachments and with little 
warmth of feeling. One house is much the same as 
another to him, one friend differs little from an- 
other. 

" A primrose by a river's brim 

A yellow primrose was to him 

And it was nothing more." 

But a man with sentiment in his heart has warmth 
and light in his feelings. His affections twine 
themselves about facts and places and memories of 
life. Such a man might well use the language of 
Naaman: "Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the 
rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of 
Israel?" 

It is easy to understand this fondness for one's 
own rivers. A river is a familiar and friendly 
thing. It is not quite so with the ocean. We ven- 
ture the statement that while many persons are 
filled with wonder at the ocean, and are even fas- 
cinated by it, there are nevertheless few persons 



ii2 The Art of Sailing On 

who have a tender sentiment, a romantic attach- 
ment, for the ocean. It is too vast for attach- 
ment, too great for sympathy. But for the rivers 
that flow through the earth there is a fine neigh- 
borliness that develops the power of attachment in 
the heart. 

Make a test of this some day with any group 
of persons. Ask the question, " Which river in all 
the world is the best?" While the note of sec- 
tional pride and prejudice may jar upon your ears, 
you shall hear all hearts ring true with loyalty to 
their own rivers. If the group represent several 
nations, you shall feel the power of national senti- 
ment. The Scotchman will speak for his brawling 
rivers that dart forth from Highland glens; the 
Swiss will praise his rivers born in icy mountain- 
tops and kissed into purity by skies of everlasting 
blue; the Englishman will sing the praise of the 
Avon and other like leisurely streams that move 
through beautiful meadows and under overhanging 
boughs. 

If the group be of our own countrymen, you 
shall hear each American sing the praise of the river 
of his own portion of our great domain. Some will 
speak with unceasing pride of the noble Hudson 
that moves majestically out to the sea. Western 
hearts will glow with praise and pride for the Mis- 



Our Own Rivers 113 

sissippi's mighty flood or the Ohio's beautiful 
sweep (the French called the Ohio la belle riviere) . 
Men of Southern birth will enshrine the name of 
some stream of the Southland that has borne their 
hearts away, such as that sweet and mellow Suwa- 
nee that has touched so many hearts with the pathos 
of song.* 

We rejoice in such attachments. We must needs 
have them. They make for our joy and useful- 
ness. If aught of this sentiment be in Naaman's 
heart, we are at one with him. The heart must 
find objectives in places and things and persons. 
Sentiment must cling to something. The soul must 
feel at home in the world. God wills it so. He 
has bidden us come and live in the earth and build 
our home here. Though it be Robinson Crusoe 
building his home through dire necessity on a soli- 
tary island, the heart will soon attach itself. 

In our day the home-instinct suffers many in- 
vasions through change. " The vertigo of civiliza- 

*" Every river that flows is good, and has something worthy 
to be loved. But those that we love most are always the 
ones that we have known best— the stream that ran before 
our father's door, the current on which we ventured our first 
boat or cast our first fly, the brook on whose banks we first 
picked the twin flower of young love. However far we may 
travel, we come back to Naaman's state of mind : 'Are not 
Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all 
the waters of Israel? ' " — " Little Rivers," by Henry van Dyke. 



ii4 The Art of Sailing On 

tion " has reached the home. One peril of our day 
lies in the waning of those instincts of the soul that 
go out and create a local center, a Damascus of 
one's own, with Abanah and Pharpar, familiar 
rivers of life, flowing by the door. Nowadays men 
move all too rapidly from one dwelling to another. 
Many are travellers, not dwellers at all. Life in 
great cities has even changed the house itself in 
its form and structure. Men no longer build their 
own houses, framing into the very architecture their 
sentiment and affection. When men become wan- 
derers, mere dwellers in tents which can be picked 
up and carried on, there is little sentiment in the 
heart for locality and little of that romantic at- 
tachment which is one of the charms of a beautiful 
life in a home. Then affection for familiar scenes 
and backgrounds of life wanes and dies away, and 
men come forth into the light of common day, 
their sweet illusions lost, their hours of vision 
dimmed, their tender attachments weakened, their 
home-instinct obscured. Pitiful indeed the waning 
of the home-feeling among men ! Against such a 
peril let us set our faces like a flint! 

But let us not mourn overmuch. The home- 
instinct is strong in the soul. God has placed it 
there. It will have surprising recoveries. We shall 
always love the touch of familiarity and ownership. 



Our Own Rivers 115 

The time is far distant when men will say without 
a glow in the heart, " This is mine own, and it is 
best of all." The child wants his own toys, and as 
he touches them there comes to him a response of 
familiarity and ownership. The student must have 
his own books, and daily in his room he cons their 
titles and reaches forth to touch them with his 
hand. They are friends of his, familiar compan- 
ions of his thinking, and when he opens their pages 
to read, and observes where he has read and 
marked before, and notes also how many a familiar 
passage glows in the light of some new feeling, the 
language of the Syrian captain frames itself upon 
his lips : " Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers 
of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " 
They are his own; they have enlisted his heart's 
affection, they have grown familiar and friendly, 
they are the best of all. 

The desire of property is so far a beneficent 
thing. It is the home-instinct at work, the desire 
to become attached and localized in this great 
world. A man labors and by dint of toil and skill 
he attains to ownership. Into this product of his 
genius he may thenceforth pour the richest senti- 
ments of his life, the true affection of his heart. 
Round about it as a center he may assemble many 
gracious amenities, many tender relations. It is his 



n6 The Art of Sailing On 

home and the home of his loved ones. Standing 
upon the threshold of his own home he may justly 
say, " Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of 
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" 
For he who does not regard his own home as the 
best and does not labor each day to make it the 
best, has admitted a root of bitterness into his life 
whence may grow much dismay and many sorrows. 
Thus ownership in the world is beneficent, and 
so also are those legitimate feelings of strength 
and superiority that spring from the sense of own- 
ership. And this is true despite the fact that own- 
ership is so often a disastrous thing. There is 
another peril here which men of generous thought 
will ever seek to avoid. The child may hug his 
toys to himself, not only in the glow and joy of 
ownership, but also in the desire to keep them from 
other children. The man may hug his money and 
grasp his property to himself in such a way as to 
betoken something other than a beneficent desire 
for ownership. Thus there grows in the soul that 
devastating power which is called selfishness, 
which lives and fattens itself upon property, even 
though other men grow lean and suffer loss. Sor- 
rowful indeed and bitter are the fruits of selfish 
ownership. Such men establish their Damascus 
and bid their Abanah and Pharpar to flow, and 



Our Own Rivers 117 

count it the best of all : nevertheless there is a vast 
illusion about it all, for there can be no true Palace 
of Art for the soul that permits selfishness to cross 
its threshold and be at home. 

Let it be noted also that the home-instinct is 
not concerned merely with documents and official 
titles, for men may be at home in God's world in 
a far larger sense, and may rejoice quite justly 
in their own Abanah and Pharpar, albeit they have 
no written title to produce. Always let us keep 
in mind the thought that God has placed us in 
the world to win it and own it for ourselves, al- 
though not to use it selfishly for ourselves. Think- 
ing of this a man will say: "I am not here by 
accident, but by the Heavenly Father's love, who 
has placed me here. I am here to build and to 
grow and to serve, to make beauty and to produce 
utilities, and to require my portion of the world to 
blossom like the rose. This is my place, which 
God has given me, and it is Abanah and Pharpar 
to me; it is the best of all." 

The secret of contentment lies here, and also the 
origin of usefulness, as well as of that rich experi- 
ence by which men grow into a larger being. Thus 
are we to deal with the precious fact of friendship. 
There is something wrong with the man himself 
who cannot feel that his own friendships are better 



n8 The Art of Sailing On 

than others — better, not because he is a bigot in his 
friendship, but because he is rich in discernment 
and eager in the power of ownership. Thus also 
should we regard that elusive thing that we call 
Opportunity. Let each man feel that his oppor- 
tunity is rich and large, that a " great door and 
an effectual " is opened, and that nature is not par- 
simonious nor can God be unjust. 

Thus will a man grow by experience and become 
owner by the home-instinct of many things which 
are not listed as property. Discipline even will be 
his teacher and will give much precious treasure 
into his keeping. Observation of men and things 
will also turn out to be his friend and the purveyor 
of much treasure for the soul. In this way it comes 
to pass that men are often poor in this world's 
goods, but rich in the world itself and rich in the 
higher things of God. 

The enrichment of memory by the precious ex- 
periences of life is not to be despised, and many are 
they who can truly say, " This my memory is my 
Abanah and Pharpar, carrying rich freightage 
through the years out into eternity." The vision 
of the old home, its gracious personages and tender 
voices, lose it not ! It is Abanah and Pharpar to 
the soul. If tree or landscape or trellised vine, or 
river or mountain, or voice of loved one or face of 






Our Own Rivers 119 

friend — if any of these have entered into life — 
they are yours, and they are better than Golconda. 
They are yours. They drew forth your sentiment 
and affection, to them your heart leaps up in real 
response. If we mistake not, you have journeyed 
all the years in the goodly company of such mem- 
ories as these. Lose them not! 

Such as these are the true riches of life, not 
merely what a man has title for, but what a man has 
in the resources of his own soul, what he has learned 
to love and feel, what he has possessed by the real 
experiences of his life. Thus may one be truly at 
home in a thought, in an ideal, in a doctrine, be- 
cause his experience has led him into the heart of 
it. Of this he may say, " It is Abanah and Phar- 
par to me," and in this he is no bigot, but one who 
rejoices in the truth that has grown up in his own 
heart. 

What treasures of feeling and ownership the 
home-instinct may bring to the soul operating thus 
in broad fields of God's world ! Men may filch our 
purse and invade our property, but no man can take 
away our joy in beauty, our real experience of truth 
and sacrifice, and of those other rich treasures that 
are stored in the halls of memory. What we have 
seen and felt of God's world, the glorious posses- 
sions that have come to us through art and litera- 



120 The Art of Sailing On 

ture, through love and friendship, as well as 
through duty, fidelity, and suffering — these are the 
real treasures of life. 

A company of travelers on the deck of a little 
steamer on the river Nile looked out over the desert 
and saw the sun going down behind the Pyramids. 
The whole land seemed flooded with bronze beauty, 
and upward from those ancient piles seemed to 
rise a stairway that might have entered the very 
presence of the Eternal. Ah! as long as memory 
remains the soul will keep the treasure of that 
scene ! Each day it ministers unconsciously to faith 
and helps to build the soul outward toward invisible 
things. 

Alfred Tennyson tells us that all his life long 
he was helped by the memory of a wall of a school- 
building of his boyhood on which were clinging 
vines, and by the memory also of a single line of 
Latin poetry, sonus aqua desilientis — " the sound of 
falling water! " Who that knows his poetry can 
fail to notice that the touch and sound of such fa- 
miliar things are in much that he has written? 

And shall we not remind ourselves that life is 
enriched in this way by that which we possess 
through our experience? Thus "the witchery of 
the soft blue sky " and " the pomp that fills the 
circuit of the summer hills": thus also the influ- 



Our Own Rivers 121 

ence of the rivers that " ran before our father's 
door," the sound of voices that are still, the vision 
of faces that have passed into the Beyond; and thus 
also the memory of those great and notable experi- 
ences of joy or sorrow, of those emotions that 
stirred the heart when it mused and when vision 
was free and large, and of those ambitions and re- 
solves which registered the reach of the soul to- 
wards higher things. These also are Abanah and 
Pharpar, and they are of the best that the soul has 
known. 

How incomparably rich and valuable are such 
truths as these in those experiences of love and 
faith wherein religion grows deeply personal and 
brings to the soul a joyous sense of ownership in 
things both human and divine ! What joy and 
contentment belong to the true child of God whose 
home-instinct has gone out into the Kingdom and 
established relations of fellowship and trust! 
" Our fellowship is with the Father and with his 
Son, Jesus Christ." 

With what enthusiasm the Old Testament be- 
lievers voice their home-feeling, their sense of at- 
tachment, to the sanctuary and Kingdom of God ! 
" The river of God is full of water," and the right- 
eous man " shall be like a tree planted by the 
streams of water." Blessed are they who are at 



122 The Art of Sailing On 

home on the banks of the rivers of God! Fruit 
cometh in its season, and there are no withering 
leaves. The dew of youth abides where flow the 
rivers of God, and the heart of one who dwells 
there goes out in love and attachment. 

Shall not the rivers of God become our own 
rivers? How sweet it is to gain citizenship and 
ownership on the banks of " the river of water of 
life, bright as crystal "! It is no mocking unreal- 
ity when an apostle declares, " Our citizenship is in 
Heaven." 

The Kingdom of God and Heaven! — if the 
Gospel means aught, it is that the soul may have 
spiritual possessions there; that the home-instinct, 
with which the heart is gifted, may reach out and 
possess unseen properties; and that the heart, valu- 
ing this heavenly citizenship, may grow in the ex- 
periences of the Kingdom, building altars and sanc- 
tuaries all the way through life, like Abraham, en- 
riching them with sentiment, crowding them with 
beauty, surrounding them with affection, and pour- 
ing over all the joy of consecrated memory. 

The love of the sanctuary! — what an enriching 
love it is, and how full are the rivers of God that 
flow by its door ! How much it means to us all 
that we can think of the Church as the Church of 
our fathers and our fathers' fathers, can recall that 



Our Own Rivers 123 

their footsteps preceded ours to the altars of God, 
that their devotion in advance of ours hung 
draperies of beauty and festoons of love upon the 
sanctuary! In the joy of such affection the Psalm- 
ist sings his song of the sanctuary, " How amiable 
are thy tabernacles "; " Blessed are they that dwell 
in thy house "; "I had rather be a doorkeeper in 
the house of my God." God give us Naaman's 
mood for our houses of worship ! Are they not 
Abanah and Pharpar, and are they not better than 
all others? Better? Yes; not because they are 
more beautiful or more grand, but because they are 
more personal, because there is a grace of senti- 
ment about them and a touch of familiarity and 
ownership. Can you sing it now out of your heart ? 

" I love thy Kingdom, Lord, 
The house of thine abode, 
The Church our blest Redeemer saved 
With his own precious blood. 

" Beyond my highest joy 

I prize her heavenly ways, 
Her sweet communion, solemn vows, 
Her hymns of love and praise." 

Do we see and feel the truth now ? The rivers 
of God are ours, our Abanah and Pharpar, better 



124 The Art of Sailing On 

than all else. " All things are yours." Let the 
heart grow daily and let it cherish sweetly the senti- 
ments of the Kingdom. Let the soul be at home, 
and let it grow always into that romantic and beau- 
tiful sense of attachment which nothing can break 
apart. "Who shall separate us?" Let the un- 
seen treasures of the Word, of the sanctuary, of 
the Kingdom itself, make the believer rich indeed. 

Thus coming into the House of God, the wor- 
shipper may look about him and see imaged to his 
soul that which has grown familiar and dear to 
him. To himself he can say, " This is mine; my 
love and faith possess it; and it is test of all. My 
Damascus is here, and my Abanah and Pharpar, the 
rivers of God, flow by the door." 

Blessed are they who are at home, who are 
"planted in the house of Jehovah"; they shall 
11 flourish in the courts of our God " ! 



A SONG OF THE HEART ABOUT 
CHRIST 



" Thou hast the dew of thy youth." 

Psalm 110:3. 






VIII 

A SONG OF THE HEART ABOUT 
CHRIST 

" Thou hast the dew of thy youth." This 
luminous sentence is written in a Psalm that belongs 
to that great Song of the Heart which men have 
sung through the ages about Jesus Christ. It is 
strongly and plainly Messianic in its reach and 
meaning. Our Lord made distinct use of it in a 
discussion with the Pharisees when he was seeking 
to establish the Lordship of the Messiah. He 
asked them why it was that David had referred to 
the Messiah as " my Lord." It is in this connec- 
tion that Mark records that " the common people 
heard him gladly." It was an instance, no doubt, 
of our Lord's wonderful use of the Scripture, like 
that other instance when he met the disciples on 
the way to Emmaus, and opened to them the Scrip- 
ture in such a remarkable way that their hearts 
burned within them. If our Lord were here to 
take this Psalm and open it to us, he would show 
us how deeply impregnated it is with the thought 
127 



128 The Art of Sailing On 

of himself, how deeply freighted it is with the ideas 
of his Kingdom, and how rich it is with the poetry 
of spiritual emotion and prophecy. 

The sentences of this Psalm were repeated as in 
a great whispering gallery generations after the 
time of their utterance. Not only did Jesus take 
them upon his lips to repeat them : Peter also, on 
the Day of Pentecost, quoted from the Psalm to 
the disciples and the multitude. In almost a dozen 
places also the writer of the Epistle to the He- 
brews draws his language from this ancient song. 
This alone makes the Psalm a precious one. It 
has been the instrument of spiritual expression 
through generations of time. • 

Also it has a background of history. It is like 
the mountains: first the foothills, back of them 
the front range, back of that the Continental Di- 
vide, and back of that the great, limitless sky 
itself! This Psalm is like that. First it is appar- 
ently a description of some human ruler whose 
name is not given. And back of that sits David the 
King in royal apparel. And back of that rises the 
mysterious figure of Melchizedek, the Priest of 
Salem. And back of that stands the silent, fas- 
cinating figure of the world's Messiah. Strange 
and wonderful Book that can paint many pictures 
in one ! 



A Song of the Heart About Christ 129 

One cannot read the Scripture as he reads his 
morning newspaper, merely to note the event of 
to-day or yesterday. One must read the Scripture 
rather with his mind sweeping across the ages. 
One must read the Bible, whether it is a conscious 
thought or not, as one would read some great but 
simple treatise on civilization, like Guizot's, or as 
one would read Bacon's " Novum Organum " or 
Newton's " Principia " — read it, I mean, with the 
feeling that this Book is sweeping across earth and 
sky, touching and illuminating incidents here and 
there, lifting isolated events into lofty connections, 
and linking all things together in that spiritual 
logic which the Apostle Paul describes as the sum- 
ming up of " all things in Christ, the things in the 
heavens and the things upon the earth." 

Historians call this the gift of " historical im- 
agination." One can scarcely understand the 
prophecies without regarding it and linking it to 
the high fact of inspiration. To one so gifted there 
are no isolated events. Things far distant reach 
down to our day. Away yonder in the dim places 
of the early years events and persons are moving 
in the dawn of history, and their shadow is falling 
down the ages, with new events and new figures 
ever emerging into new light and new life. 

One will not appreciate the Scripture as he ought 



130 The Art of Sailing On 

until he learns to read it with this sweep of thought 
backward and forward across the wide tract of 
years and centuries. 

Let us listen thus, eager to hear the Song of 
the Ages, to the singer who penned the one hun- 
dred and tenth Psalm, whose royal fingers knew 
the sweet twanging of the harp, and whose heart 
was in love with divine things — listen to him as he 
sings his song of the world's Messiah. We can 
touch but two or three of his sentences. 

" Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of 
Melchizedek." This sentence of the song arrests 
our attention. 

Turn back the pages quickly until you have come 
to the Book of Genesis. It is the fourteenth chap- 
ter of that book of beginnings. You will need to 
read it again to refresh your memory of it. Abram 
the Hebrew, upon whom the light of sacred history 
is already resting, is returning from the rescue of 
Lot and his family, and is passing the city of Sa- 
lem, its name an emblem of peace, and its founda- 
tions the rock-ribbed hills that are later to be 
touched by the feet of the Son of Man. Down 
from the hill yonder, from Salem, comes a mys- 
terious person to greet Abram and to bring to him 
bread and wine. Nothing do we know of him^ 
neither father nor mother, nor tribe nor origin — 



A Song of the Heart About Christ 131 

except that he was " priest of God Most High." 
And his name was Melchizedek, which means my 
king is righteous. Only three verses there in Gen- 
esis, and the history sweeps on. 

But the incident fastens itself upon the minds of 
biblical writers. Here is David in this sweet Psalm 
catching up the incident and lifting it into new light. 
" Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Mel- 
chizedek." To his fine prophetic insight this an- 
cient priest of Salem, who came down from the 
mountains to bless Abram as he passed by, to him 
as he sings his Song of the Heart, Melchizedek 
was a type of the Messiah, coming down from the 
high places to meet men in their journey. That 
strange, unexpected figure of the priest of Salem, 
the City of Peace, bursting suddenly upon the scene 
yonder in the Old Testament is impressive indeed. 

It is the impressiveness of mystery, his origin 
unexplained, the order of his priesthood undefined. 
And yet it is the impressiveness of dignity also, for 
he is plainly the priest of the Most High God, his 
very garments fragrant with the incense of lofty 
altars. It is the impressiveness of spiritual wealth 
also, for he brought to the traveler those gifts 
which are typical of bountiful nourishment, the 
bread and the wine. And it is the impressiveness 
of authority, too, for to him as by something irre- 



132 The Art of Sailing On 

sistible Abram gave " a tenth of all." Still more 
it is the impressiveness of the supernatural, for he 
came from heights that no man could tell. See 
the stately tread of that far-away figure of Mel- 
chizedek, coming down out of Salem to the 
passerby — and he such a representative spiritual fa- 
ther of the race as Abram too! — with gifts of 
bread and wine, with gracious and hospitable bene- 
dictions; and then turn to hear the royal harpist 
in Jerusalem, his mind swelling with the vision of 
the Christ. " Thou, thou, thou," he declares, 
" art a Priest for ever after the order of Mel- 
chizedek." 

But this is not all. The current of this great 
Book of the generations sweeps on, carrying this 
thought upon its heaving bosom. Open the New 
Testament now, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
This is the book of the Bible that deals especially 
with the priesthood of Jesus Christ. This writer 
also is looking back at that stately, mysterious fig- 
ure of Melchizedek. The sentence of David, too, 
is in his memory. It has hung in the thoughts of 
men, this sentence has, for generations. It has 
grown richer, fuller, like some song of youth which 
men still sing in their old age, and which is now 
mellow, sweet, and low, with the flavor of years 
about it. This writer in Hebrews is singing it still, 



A Song of the Heart About Christ 133 

its application to Jesus as clear to his mind as the 
sunlight, his understanding of it rich and full, hav- 
ing the glow of personal acquaintance with the 
great and true High Priest of God. Read those 
chapters, five, six, and seven, in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, and you seem to hear the pipes of some 
wonderful organ swelling out in the Song of the 
Ages. (Hebrews 5:5-10; 6:19, 20; 7:1-3, 15- 
17, 22, 24-28; 8 : 1, 2.) 

Read these words of the Holy Scripture in the 
manner suggested, the mind alive to the fact that 
God's thought is filling the years, and suddenly as 
we link these writings together, Genesis, Psalms, 
Hebrews, we realize that we have been following 
God's Messianic thought, " thinking God's 
thoughts after him," as Kepler, the astronomer, 
said, tracing his purpose from its early beginnings 
on to its flowering out, as one might begin with 
the sources of a stream in the mountains and follow 
it down the mountainsides, sparkling and growing 
every inch of the way — and suddenly it flashes out 
upon us in full, great, splendid, glorious sunlight, 
the thought of the eternal, unending, ever-living, 
irresistible Priesthood of Jesus Christ: "Thou art 
a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." 

No one can question who it is of whom he 
speaks. It is that Grand Stranger to the world 



134 The Art of Sailing On 

who came down from God's high hills, down to 
Judea's low hills and valleys, to meet men, to 
bring them God's own gifts of grace and love, to 
receive from men their gifts and tithes, the Priest 
of the Most High God, a Priest for ever — for 
ever! A Priest whose priesthood is " after the 
power of an endless life " ! Men think that they 
can be indifferent to Jesus Christ, that they can 
treat him with cavalier unconcern. But God has 
written this sentence of him throughout his Book : 
" Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of 
Melchizedek." 

This is one vista of this sweet and wonderful 
Song of the Heart about Christ. 

And there are still other insights of this spirit- 
ual poet, still other contributions to the Song of 
the Ages about Christ. Think of this for a mo- 
ment: "In holy array, out of the womb of the 
morning." Recently there have been many criti- 
cisms of the author of " The Battle Hymn of the 
Republic " for those fine lines — 

" In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me." 

It may be that Mrs. Howe had these words of the 
one hundred and tenth Psalm in mind : " In the 
beauties of holiness from the womb of the morn- 






A Song of the Heart About Christ 135 

ing " (A. V.). If you recall at this moment some 
great sunrise that you have seen — in the mountains, 
for example — you will know what the Psalmist is 
saying. It is the Messiah coming like the dawn 
upon the world, " from the womb of the morn- 
ing." And what an insight of the truth about 
Jesus Christ as the Light of the world ! 

O sleeper, awake! Over hill and valley and 
plain, down out of the sky, comes the mysterious 
light. It is morning; the dawn of the day is here! 
It is knocking at thine eyelids, it is pleading for 
entrance at every closed door and shutter. See 
yonder ! the very womb of the morning opens, and 
the Light of the world comes forth. It is morn! 
the dawn of day is here! "Awake! thou that 
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall 
shine upon thee." 

Ah, David, sweet harper of Jerusalem, thou 
couldst not understand the full meaning of this ! 
Thou hadst an insight of the truth that will later 
bloom like a flower. Thy thought shall live on 
until later singers shall lift the song high, singing 
of the " Dayspring from on high," of the Light 
of the world that came at Bethlehem, of the dark- 
ness that fled at the coming of Jesus. 

Christ has brought morning light into the world. 
This is another vista of the Psalm. 



136 The Art of Sailing On 

There is one more description that is worthy of 
pause : " Thou hast the dew of thy youth." Think, 
of this for a little time. The dew! the dew! — 
that mystery of the morning, strange product of 
nature's alchemy, wrought in the darkness of her 
wonderful laboratory. Down from the embracing 
air the dewdrops come trooping upon the earth, 
an army of them, shining like pearls and diamonds. 
The dew ! Is it not the Creator pouring life daily 
upon the earth, renewing it, making it perpetually 
young? It is an old world, this is, gray and 
decrepit and bent and twisted with age, but God 
keeps the world young with dew. God's elixir, 
is it not? the secret of youth which philosophers 
have sought in vain. " Thou hast the dew of thy 
youth ! " It is the echo of Isaac's benediction upon 
Jacob : " God give thee of the dew of heaven." 

What a sentence it is ! What a swing it has 
outward towards the beauty of the world, inward 
towards the secrets of nature, and upward towards 
the glory of God! 

And this is the great thing the sweet singer is 
saying about Christ. In the vision of his own 
heart he is gazing at the sublime figure of the Son 
of God, mysterious, stately, simple, wondrously di- 
vine, yet wondrously human, treading the moun- 
taintops in grand solemnity, coming down like 






A Song of the Heart About Christ 137 

Melchizedek with bread and wine out of Salem; 
and suddenly, with the vision and longing of his 
heart for a great Friend, an eternal Priest between 
God and man, rising in his soul, the song swells 
out to the accompaniment of the harp into this 
great utterance — " Thou — thou hast the dew of thy 
youth." 

Oh, it is a wonderful thing to say about the 
world's Friend and Saviour! It proclaims the 
truth of the unending vigor of Christ. " Thou hast 
the dew of thy youth." No wonder that Eng- 
land's laureate addresses him in the lines of " In 
Memoriam " — 

" Strong Son of God, Immortal Love." 

No wonder that William E. Gladstone answered 
the letter of a skeptical friend thus : " All I think, 
all I write, all I am is based upon the divinity of 
Jesus Christ." 

" Thou hast the dew of thy youth." There is 
no decay or decrepitude about Jesus. The world 
waxes old, but Jesus never grows old. Plato and 
ten thousand other great ones of the earth are 
hoary-headed with age. Jesus is fresh and strong 
like a May morning. 

It is the note of strength that is in Jesus that 



138 The Art of Sailing On 

strikes the heart. His appeal is that of the Strong 
Son of God, blooming in immortal youth, " the 
same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever," no 
burden or weariness of the ages upon him ! " Thou 
hast the dew of thy youth." 

How much this thought of the inexhaustible 
vigor of Christ — the living, active, youthful Christ 
— meant to the early Christians is clear in more 
ways than one. In his essay on " The Roman 
Catacombs " Dean Stanley describes a picture of 
the Good Shepherd that is to be seen on those sub- 
terranean walls. It is a " beautiful, graceful figure, 
bounding down as from his native hills, with the 
happy sheep nestling on his shoulder, with the 
pastoral pipes in his hand, blooming in immortal 
youth." Perchance it was an Hellenic conception; 
it was the Greek idea mingling with the Christian 
thought. Still more it was the prophetic thought 
of Christ, as in this Psalm. The dew of God was 
upon him, the bloom of youth was about him. And 
it matters much to us to think of him in this way, 
to know that this Grand Stranger, who came into 
our world like Melchizedek from Salem, is a 
Friend who never wearies of his cares, is never ex- 
hausted by his burden, is never aged by his suffer- 
ings. He has a " priesthood unchangeable." 
" Wherefore also he is able to save to the utter- 



A Song of the Heart About Christ 139 

most them that draw near unto God through him, 
seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for 
them." 

And this same vigor and youthfulness of Christ 
have been imported into Christianity itself to give 
a certain character of strength, a certain strain of 
heroism, a certain mark of sublimity. When Rob- 
ert Weir had completed for the Capitol at Wash- 
ington his noble painting, " The Embarkment of 
the Pilgrims," he called in some of his artist 
friends to inspect it. They told him the truth 
about it. The coloring was fine, the positions were 
good, but the faces were expressionless. Then the 
artist knew that there was a secret of the life of 
the Pilgrims that he had missed. He began to 
study their history, he caught their spirit, he be- 
came, it is said, a converted man. Then he took 
up his brush again, to leave his imperishable record 
in the rotunda of the Capitol. In the olden time 
the Lord made an artist of Bezaleel. So did this 
artist learn how to give expression to the faces of 
the Pilgrims, when he knew by experience the 
strength of their faith. 

Pilgrim Fathers, were they ? Yes, but they were 
not old. They were literally young men, only one 
of them being in middle life at the time of the 
landing. Miles Standish was scarcely more than 



140 The Art of Sailing On 

thirty-five. Governor Bradford was thirty-one. 
Edward Winslow the diplomat was thirty-seven. 
In another sense they were young too — young be- 
cause the dew of spiritual youth was upon them, 
because they were inspired to do their work by a 
faith that knew no obstacles, that suffered no de- 
crepitude of age, that could build a new country 
and a new State, because it was a new faith. Mat- 
thew Arnold, in one of his essays, imagines 
Shakespeare and Vergil accompanying the Pilgrim 
Fathers. " Think," he says, " what intolerable 
company Shakespeare and Vergil would have found 
them." Yet these same intolerable Pilgrims had 
learned the secret of Jesus Christ. Young men 
they were, and yet Pilgrim Fathers also — fathers of 
all who share the inspiration of Jesus Christ, fa- 
thers also of the best elements of our national life 
even to this hour. 

And so it has been all along the centuries with 
those who have done the work of Christ's King- 
dom. The dew of youth, its vigor, its strength, 
its joyfulness, has rested upon those who have 
touched hands with Jesus Christ. 

Shall not the Church, shall not all who are his 
friends, rejoice in this? Let us put a joyful note 
into our work for him. Let us labor ns in the 
company of One who is strong and unwearied. Let 



A Song of the Heart About Christ 141 

us know that his cause is not moribund, nor can 
it ever be. Let us beware lest our own faith be 
decrepit and weak with age. Let us grow, not old, 
but young, in the service of our Lord. 

For of our Lord it is written : " Thou hast the 
dew of thy youth." 



THE GUILD OF BRICKLAYERS 



" / am doing a great work, so that I cannot come 
down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave 
it and come down to you?" 

Nehemiah 6:3. 



IX 
THE GUILD OF BRICKLAYERS 

Nehemiah was at work on the wall. He was 
laying bricks. He was a member of that Guild of 
Bricklayers which from the beginning until now 
has done God's work of building. There was a 
fine, brave spirit about him. His words ring out 
clear and strong. Plainly he loved his work, and 
he wrought honorably and joyously at his task. 
Quite unconsciously he spoke here one of the great 
strong sentences that men have uttered about their 
work for God. 

Apparently he was a quiet man, this man on the 
wall. Yet he was intense. It is impressive to see 
him there working away with his trowel. Nothing 
counted with him but to do his work according to 
command, and to keep on working until the work 
was done. We are apt to admire a man of this 
kind. We say, " That is thoroughgoing and mas- 
terful!" 

The messengers came from Sanballat and Tobiah 
and Geshem the Arabian ; five times they came and 
145 



146 The Art of Sailing On 

invited the silent man on the wall to come down 
and confer with them. It was an honorable invi- 
tation. Nevertheless, he never stopped his work, 
but went right on. These were great and impor- 
tant worthies, with high-sounding names — San- 
ballat, Tobiah, and Geshem! "No matter," he 
said to their messengers, " it is of no use to call 
me down. They are very great and important men, 
and I thank them for the courtesy extended to me 
in the village of the Plain of Ono; but I cannot 
come down; I am too busy. I am doing a great 
work. Why should the work cease? " 

If they were not utterly lacking in comprehen- 
sion, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem must have be- 
gun to suspect, with the same answer coming back 
over and over, that the quiet man on the wall was 
master of the situation. There was something 
strong in his attitude, and his words contained that 
forthright thrust of human speech out of the heart 
that gets beneath the guard. We might stop to 
admire the finesse of the man, his quick wit, his 
keen perception, his ready diplomacy. So also we 
might spend time upon his gift of language, the 
felicitous way he had of speaking a quick and 
quotable sentence. Let us rather try to reach the 
heart of the man, to know the spirit that was in 
him. 



The Guild of Bricklayers 147 

He believed in the magnitude of his work. 
Plainly this is his thought when he says, " I am 
doing a great work." It was common labor that 
he was doing — fitting bricks and stones into their 
places on the wall — but to him it was like fitting 
diamonds in a crown. It was not his own work; it 
was God's work. He was doing it with that 
thought in mind. There is a ring in his voice, and 
there is a fashion of gesture about him, both of 
which carry conviction as to his own views of what 
he was doing. It is easy to judge whether a man 
believes in his work. 

He never knew what an exalted sentiment he 
had uttered that day on the wall. Nor did he 
realize what help his words would bring to men 
in the long years to come. It is one of the- strong 
and stirring pictures of the Word of God. If we 
could hang it upon the walls of memory what help 
and stimulus it might prove to be ! 

The best work that gets itself done in the world 
is done in this fashion — out of the heart, with 
mighty conviction. With such workmen there is 
no shrinking or shirking and no missing of the 
point. With such workmen there will be a ring of 
pride and joy in the voice. A man must believe in 
his own work. Then he will do it out of a full 
heart. 



148 The Art of Sailing On 

It was an exalted sentiment that Nehemiah ut- 
tered, but not better than his work deserved. This 
he knew. He was only laying bricks on the wall, 
but it was the wall of Jerusalem that he was help- 
ing to rebuild. "A man's reach must exceed his 
grasp." He saw and touched in his heart far more 
than his hands could handle. It was the invisible 
Kingdom of God, far-stretching, far-working — it 
was for this that he was laboring. Hear him as 
he lifts his trowel and fixes a stone in its place: 
" I am doing a great work. Every stone that goes 
into this wall helps to build an everlasting cause. 
This is why I cannot come down. Why should 
such work as this cease? " 

May we catch the spirit of this quiet workman 
on the wall as we think of the magnitude of God's 
work in the world ! What a work it is ! What a 
just pride one may feel who is doing it as best he 
may! It is not the magnitude of what the work- 
man does, it is the magnitude of the work, that 
counts. Yonder in the far south our nation is do- 
ing a work of vast magnitude. A thin isthmus that 
binds two continents is yielding to the tools of 
men. The waters of two oceans will soon flow 
together. The eyes of the nations of the world are 
upon this task. It is one of the colossal labors of 
history. The commonest workman there who han- 



The Guild of Bricklayers 149 

dies pick or shovel, or oils machinery amidst dirt 
and grease, or runs upon errands from place to 
place, might hold up his head and say with pride 
in his voice, " I am doing a great work." It is 
not the magnitude of what we do, it is the mag- 
nitude of the work, that counts. 

It is well for God's workmen to realize this. 
The work itself has vast magnitude. The work 
exalts the workman. It matters little as to the par- 
ticular task: the work itself is great. The Old 
Testament worshippers grasped this. To snuff 
candles in the Tabernacle, or to carry wood for the 
sacrifice, or to wear a linen ephod like Samuel — 
this was honor enough. What pride and joy are in 
the heart of the Psalmist: "I had rather be a 
doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell 
in the tents of wickedness." Anything for God 
is a great work. It need not be large in itself. His 
work is never otherwise than large. 

Have we not often watched the glee of a little 
child in doing a slight task? Every movement is 
one of secret pride and happiness. His little shoul- 
ders seem to him like those of Atlas bearing great 
burdens upon them. It is a scene that teaches pro- 
found lessons. Too often as the years go by the 
joy of workmanship passes away. The burdens 
of the Kingdom are full of pressure. Slight tasks 



150 The Art of Sailing On 

even seem hard. We forget how great the work 
is. Let us keep a childlike joy in the work of our 
God. Let us move with free and happy step. Let 
us not fail of uplift in the soul when we think of 
the magnitude of his work. Our work may be 
measured by shovelfuls or by a meager tale of 
bricks; but if so be we are at work on the walls of 
God's city, it is always a great work. 

But the man on the wall who was laying bricks, 
however much he magnified the work, never forgot 
the importance of the workman. " I am doing a 
great work, so that I cannot come down: why 
should the work cease whilst I leave it? " I — I — 
I — all this has an egotistical sound. A score of 
Nehemiahs might " come down " and still the work 
would go on. Surely this workman is overesti- 
mating his own importance ! God's work is greater 
than all the workers ; the failure of the workman is 
not the failure of the work. 

All this is true. Nevertheless there is a just 
form of egotism that belongs to the Kingdom of 
God. It is the same emphasis of self-importance 
which the workman on yonder building must feel. 
" If I come down the work will cease — my work 
will cease — and my work is part of the whole." 
The workman must believe in himself, in his rela- 
tion to the work, else the work will suffer. He 



The Guild of Bricklayers 151 

must believe in his own responsibility and obliga- 
tion. He must believe that every workman has 
his work to do. If any of the workmen drop out 
or " come down," the work will suffer. This 
sense of obligation is in Nehemiah's words: " Why 
should the work cease whilst I leave it?" 

Many fail to realize how dependent God's work 
is upon the individual workman. They say, " The 
work is great; it will go on; I shall not be missed." 
Yes, the work is great, but it ceases the moment that 
any workman comes down from the wall. If we 
could realize that our unfaithfulness in some minor 
duty in reality causes God's work to cease, it would 
almost terrify us to think of deserting any real post 
of duty. Consider what a serious thing it is to 
come down from the wall, and thus to cause God's 
work — the work that he has put in our hands — to 
cease. 

One of the greatest difficulties which the Church 
has to face is failure at the point of individual re- 
sponsibility. So many workmen " come down " ! 
So many excuses are offered for quitting the work ! 
" They all with one consent began to make ex- 
cuse." What a clear understanding the Master 
has of our little travesty of excuses ! There will 
be some of us who will say, " I have no ability 
for the work." This may be true; but are you 



152 The Art of Sailing On 

willing to work with such ability as you have? 
There will be others who will say, " I have no 
time; I have other work to do." This may be 
true; but are you willing that God's work should 
cease? There will be still others who will say, " I 
believe in the work, but I cannot do it myself; let 
others do it." This may be true; but how can any 
other workman do the work that belongs to you? 

In the Kingdom there is marked emphasis upon 
the individual. Let each worker do his own work 
— his own work. " Each man shall bear his own 
burden." The Master Workman gives room for 
individual abilities and personal traits, yet he would 
melt these all together into a common stock for 
God. The Old Testament contains striking exam- 
ples of variety in type. Elisha was called from 
among a dozen farmers who were holding a 
ploughing-bee. Gideon came forth from the 
threshing-floor with the sweet smell of the crushed 
wheat upon him. Moses was engaged at his shep- 
herd's task when the bush flamed forth on the 
mountainside and God's call came to him. Many 
individuals and many personal traits and experi- 
ences these represent, but all of them to become 
useful in the Kingdom. The emphasis is laid upon 
the spirit of the workman. 

No matter about learning and position. What 



The Guild of Bricklayers 153 

spirit has the workman for God's work? No mat- 
ter about appearance. " Perchance he was behind 
the door when beauty was passed around." What 
is his purpose as a workman? Will he lay bricks 
on the wall if the Master Workman should set him 
to do this common task? 

There are great structural traits of character 
that are essential to good workmanship for God. 
Some of these are so commonplace as to be easily 
overlooked. Promptness and alertness are very 
necessary. Napoleon remarked about one of his 
generals that he was the " first to awake on the day 
of battle." The cause of Jehovah is important 
enough to quicken all our faculties. " It is time 
for you to awake out of sleep ; for now is salva- 
tion nearer to us than when we first believed." 
" Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee." 

The gift of action is another structural trait. 
It is well for the Guild of Bricklayers to assemble 
on occasions and pass resolutions. But what of 
the gift of action? " I have heard very little," 
said Horace Mann, " of the resolutions of the dis- 
ciples, but a great deal of the Acts of the Apos- 
tles." Keep your trowel busy all day long, O work- 
man on the walls ! " The Great Taskmaster's 
eye " is upon you, and his work is enough to fill 



154 The Art of Sailing On 

the hands and hearts of all who love the thrill of 
a great task. No day ever dawns in the Kingdom 
of Christ in which there is not something to do 
that is worth the doing. 

To these traits of character let us not fail to 
add also the gift of imagination, to make efficient 
and joyous workmanship in the Guild of Brick- 
layers. In the American Revolution there were 
two generals operating in the same field. One of 
them was reckoned as an abler commander than 
the other, but his biographers tell us that he lacked 
what the other possessed — the gift of imagination. 
He could not see through the mist of circumstance, 
he could not follow a plan of campaign afar off, 
he could not project himself into a victorious idea. 
The workman who is overborne by the " eternal 
commonplaces of religion," who cannot lift him- 
self by his grasp of spiritual ideals and hopes above 
the common level, will yield all too easily to the 
temptation to " come down." High thoughts on 
the wall where the work is being done, and trans- 
forming hopes, together with lofty and untiring 
visions of all that overlies and underlies the task 
— these make the work great. 

And besides these structural forces in the spirit 
of the worker, there are those grand old virtues of 
courage and perseverance and purpose that keep. 



The Guild of Bricklayers 155 

right on with the work through a thousand dif- 
ficulties and apparent defeats. 

" Hard upon hard makes a poor stone wall, 
Soft upon soft makes none at all." 

Bricks and mortar together harden into the true 
defence of Zion. Difficulties may thicken on every 
side. Even so, to a true workman there is a fierce 
delight in doing one's duty and going on with the 
work. "Having done all — to stand"! What a 
high sense of privilege there is in this — that God's 
work, though so great, is ever dependent upon 
man ! And if a privilege, it is also an obligation. 
If there is aught that you can do to strengthen the 
wall, do it heartily as unto the Lord. If you can 
lift only so much as the weight of a finger of the 
burden, fail not to do it. Throw all your powers 
into the work. Believe in your own importance. 
Indulge a sanctified egotism. Dare to say, " I am 
doing a great work." Dare to believe that God's 
work is dependent upon you. 

When this is the spirit of the workmen, then 
great building eras come in the Kingdom of God.* 
If God's people everywhere had something more of 

*See Dr. Horace Bushnell's sermon, "Building Eras in 
Religion." 



156 The Art of Sailing On 

Nehemiah's spirit, how rapidly the work, would go 
forward ! Every man would await orders from the 
Master Workman, and there would be a gleeful 
tone among all the workers. Brains would be 
clearer and hands more skilful, for a high spirit 
of workmanship invariably clears and strengthens 
the faculties; the tools of the workers would sound 
a triumphant note and everywhere there would be 
zest and purpose. In such times also difficulties 
seem harmless to foil the success of the work. 
Rather difficulties seem made to be conquered; and 
the high chivalry and adventurous touch of an 
heroic Gospel sing in the blood of men. In such 
building eras men rejoice in the work and thrill 
with its discipline and hardness. In such times 
nothing stands in the way. When the Kingdom of 
God has its building eras, the old pride of work- 
manship lays hold upon all the Guild of the Brick- 
layers. Then every one must take a hand, and no 
man will find an adequate excuse. In such a day 
men may grow tired in the work, but never tired 
of the work. Then will the members of the Guild 
come with their inventive genius, and their initia- 
tive, and their enterprise, and their noble idealism, 
and their constructive ability, and place all these 
and more at the service of the work. Then will 
the workman say valiantly out of his heart — there 



The Guild of Bricklayers 157 

will be a ring of courage and conviction in his voice 
— " Why should the work cease whilst I leave it? " 
O Lord our God, give us many workmen on the 
walls like unto thy servant Nehemiah! Increase 
the number and the strength of the membership in 
the Guild of Bricklayers, and give them a high and 
joyous spirit for their task, so that " muscle-mak- 
ing toil " may not dismay them, so that nothing 
may cause them to come down, so that a new and 
vaster building era may come into thy Kingdom 
on the earth 1 



THE HONORS OF THE HOUSE 



" / entered into thy house, thou gavest me no 
water for my feet; but she hath wetted my feet 
with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. 
Thou gavest me no kiss; but she, since the time I 
came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head 
with oil thou didst not anoint: but she hath 
anointed my feet with ointment." 

Luke 7 : 44-46. 



X 

THE HONORS OF THE HOUSE * 

Our Lord and Master seldom rebuked men. 
He was all gentleness in manner and deeply tender 
in speech. He sought to lay the foundations of 
his Kingdom, not in denunciation, but in appeal. 
He approached men more often with entreaty than 
command, and his lips were utter strangers to the 
bitterness of blame. His disciples in the world 
who are growing in likeness to him will likewise 
turn away from bitterness and rebuke, and will 
value gentleness and gracious courtesy and tender 
entreaty, for " the wisdom that is from above is 
first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be en- 
treated." 

Jesus of Nazareth was the Prince of Gentlemen, 
and his manliness had that winsome dignity and 
grace which mark the high soul of courtesy behind 
the gracious manners of the man. In our day men 
would do well to study the courtesy of the Man 
of Nazareth, especially his manners toward the 

* An Address at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 
161 



1 62 The Art of Sailing On 

poor and needy, his regard for women, and his 
open sincerity toward the heart of a friend. 

It strikes one with surprise at first to find several 
instances in the Gospels in which Jesus seemed to 
forget his gentleness and to allow himself to speak 
words of rebuke. Such instances however do not 
disprove his gentle spirit. How often it has been 
shown that profound feelings of indignation may 
not be incompatible with the greatest gentleness of 
soul. The rebuke of a gentleman therefore against 
an act of incivility or discourtesy is more severe 
than that of others, for it is the stern judgment of 
a courteous soul upon acts of rudeness, it is the 
stamp of indignation placed by a sensitive spirit 
upon the inconsiderate and ungracious acts of men. 
To be rebuked by Jesus of Nazareth for a common 
act of impoliteness was to be rebuked with double 
severity, for his own instincts of courtesy were so 
true, his own appreciation of the fineness of a 
gracious act was so unerring and sincere. 

It is not one of our theologians, but a poet rather, 
who reminds us that the art of courtesy is one of 
the most important practised in the world, and of 
all the fine arts it is probably the only one that is 
cultivated in the next world as well as in this. 
When we have fully learned this lesson of the life 
of Jesus and the Gospel which he preached and 



The Honors of the House 163 

practised among men, his Church will become the 
most hospitable place in the world, where men will 
learn to think twice before they speak ill of one an- 
other, where gentleness will abound and religious 
incivilities will be unknown, where courtesies to 
the stranger and the unknown will be prompt and 
eager, where the poor and even the outcast will find 
a welcome whose sincerity is like that of the Mas- 
ter himself, and where courtesy to the Lord and 
courtesy to men will be written on all the vestments 
and on the very walls of the sanctuary itself. 

One day our Lord and Master was a guest — an 
invited guest — in the house of a Pharisee. His 
name was Simon; he was one of the several Simons 
of the New Testament narrative. He had desired 
Jesus to come to his table; yet his hospitality was 
" qualified and condescending," his welcome was 
" cold and measured." He received his guest, but 
not with " the honors of the house." 

It was the custom of the day, upon the arrival of 
a guest in the house, to show him immediate atten- 
tion. There were courtesies of the house that were 
due to the guest. Servants brought water, no mat- 
ter whether his journey had been long or short, 
that he might bathe his feet. Oil also was brought 
that he might anoint his head. And more impor- 
tant than anything else, when the guest arrived the 



164 The Art of Sailing On 

host came forward at once and gave him a kiss of 
welcome. These were the ordinary civilities, the 
" honors of the house," which every guest had a 
right to expect. 

But when Jesus entered the house of Simon none 
of these courtesies was shown to him. The Phari- 
see's hospitality had an air of condescension about 
it, as if to say, " It is enough for me merely to 
receive him at my table." Our Lord evidently no- 
ticed his host's want of politeness and considera- 
tion, and it pained him deeply, although he uttered 
no complaint. 

Strangely enough there came another person into 
Simon's house, who was not bidden to the feast. 
It was a woman of the town, a sinner, withal a 
penitent sinner whose heart had in some way been 
touched by the transforming love of Christ. She 
had so little importance that her name is not even 
mentioned — simply a nameless woman whom Jesus 
had helped. Her act was one of almost unwar- 
rantable interference; yet so wonderful also in its 
surprise and spontaneity of love that it has been 
written down here in the imperishable record of 
the Gospel of Luke. Learning that the Master 
was reclining at Simon's table, she made her way 
into the presence of the host and his guest. Be- 
neath her cloak she carried a flask, " an alabaster 



The Honors of the House 165 

cruse," not of ordinary oil but of perfumed oint- 
ment. Her purpose was to anoint the feet of Jesus 
as he lay at the table. 

It must have been a silent and impressive scene. 
In the midst of her preparation for the anointing, 
she burst into tears, as she thought of her own life, 
her sorrow and sin. Her tears rained down upon 
the Master's feet, and because she had no cloth to 
wipe them, she unbound the coils of her hair, and, 
weeping still, she wiped his feet with the hair of 
her head, notwithstanding that it was the greatest 
humiliation for a woman to be seen in public with 
her hair down. And as if this were not enough, in 
the very abandon of grief and love she stooped and 
kissed his feet, not once, but again and again and 
again, for the word here says that she " kissed 
much." And when this had been done she poured 
the contents of the alabaster flask upon his feet. 
Thus did this nameless and penitent sinner pay to 
Simon's guest the honors of the house. 

This was not all. The Lord looked at his host's 
face and knew what was passing in his mind. To 
himself he was saying, " This man, if he were a 
prophet, would have perceived who and what man- 
ner of woman this is that toucheth him, that she is 
a sinner." Then Jesus spoke. " Simon," he said 
— his tone must have been deeply tender even as 



1 66 The Art of Sailing On 

he uttered his indignant rebuke — " a certain lender 
had two debtors: the one owed five hundred shil- 
lings, and the other fifty. When they had not 
wherewith to pay, he forgave them both. Which of 
them therefore will love him most? " And Simon 
answered, " He, I suppose, to whom he forgave the 
most." And he said unto him, " Thou hast rightly 
judged." Then turning to the woman, he went on 
to the end of his quiet and unerring rebuke. " Si- 
mon," he said, " seest thou this woman? I entered 
thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: 
but she hath wetted my feet with her tears and 
wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest me no 
kiss; but she, since the time I came in, hath not 
ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst 
not anoint; but she hath anointed my feet with oint- 
ment. Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which 
are many, are forgiven, for she loved much ; but to 
whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." 

Ah ! it was a keen rebuke and well deserved ! nor 
do we read that Jesus' host spoke a word in reply. 
Let us believe that Simon felt especially the weight 
of Jesus' words, " Thou gavest me no kiss." Our 
Lord might have foregone the water for his feet, 
the oil for his head, but — " Thou gavest me no 
kiss ! " It was not vanity that directed this rebuke. 
It was the hurt soul of One who knew that he was 



The Honors of the House 167 

the servant of men for the best things of earth and 
heaven. He craved the welcome of his host, not 
in words alone, but in deeds. He desired the out- 
going of the heart in love, the sign of hospitality, 
the token of friendship, the pledge of loyalty. He 
missed the neglected honors of the house, the marks 
of civility in the very manners of men, which might 
have told him that at least he had the welcome of 
an ordinary guest. 

Still he was silent until the woman came — came 
with her broken alabaster-box and her broken heart 
as well, came with her unbidden, unrestrained tears 
of penitence, came with her strange acts of devo- 
tion. Still he was silent — he might never have ut- 
tered his rebuke at all — until the Pharisee in his 
heart complained — complained of the character of 
the woman and of Jesus' toleration of her, com- 
plained of her unwonted show of devotion, her un- 
expected and surprising abandon of love and peni- 
tence. Then the indignation of Christ spoke ! — not 
indignation for himself alone, but for one who had 
done him the neglected honors of the house. Yes, 
the indignation of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Gen- 
tlemen, the gentlest spirit known among men — his 
indignation flashed forth. " Simon," he said, 
" thou gavest me no kiss ! " What a solemn re- 
buke was this ! 



1 68 The Art of Sailing On 

Jesus Christ is the guest of our house to-day. 
Let us speak these remaining words to one another 
quietly and intently. We have spread our table 
and have desired him to come. The honors of the 
house belong to him. Let every civility, every 
courtesy of the soul, be paid to him. This is the 
place of love because it is the place of forgiveness. 
It is the atonement for sin that is set forth in this 
broken bread and this cup. It is pardon in the love 
of Christ that is spoken of here. It is peace 
through his blood that is proclaimed by this table. 
It is his table, and it is ours; we have spread it in 
remembrance of him. He is the Guest of the 
House. It is the place of forgiveness, therefore it 
is the place of love. Other differences may stand, 
riches or poverty, social position or obscurity, power 
or weakness. In one thing we are alike: we are 
pardoned men and women, pardoned through the 
blood of Jesus Christ. He has paid the price of 
our freedom; we are redeemed with a price. 

What a levelling place this is — the Lord's table! 
The rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, 
all are here on the same platform — forgiveness. 
Jesus Christ is the center of a great democracy, and 
this table of his is the common table for all peni- 
tent, trusting souls, for the saint and for the sinner. 
Thomas Carlyle thought that democracy was born 



The Honors of the House 169 

at Bunker Hill. It was born much longer ago than 
that: it was born, says another, at Bethlehem. It 
was this that Simon did not understand. He did 
not understand that the woman had a place at the 
feast, a surer place than his own. She stood on 
the platform of forgiveness. She had been much 
forgiven, therefore she loved much. Hence her 
tears and her kisses and her broken jar of per- 
fumed ointment. But Simon fancied himself on 
another platform. In his soul he did not realize 
forgiveness. He would have said that he scarcely 
needed forgiveness. He had naught as he sup- 
posed to repent of. He gave the Master no water 
for his feet, no oil for his head, no kiss for his lips 
— no honors of the house — for his heart had never 
melted, his soul had never gone out in love, he had 
not come to stand on the platform of forgiveness. 

We see it all now. May we feel it too in our 
hearts ! We are all alike ; we have nothing to pay. 
Some of us have been forgiven five hundred shil- 
lings, and some of us but fifty, yet none of us had 
anything wherewith to pay. For the saint as well 
as for the sinner, it is the place of love because it 
is the place of forgiveness. 

So then all the honors of the house belong to 
the Lord who bought us with his precious blood. 
There will be no courtesy wanting that we can show 



170 The Art of Sailing On 

to him. " This do in remembrance of me." It is 
a feast of those high courtesies of the soul that are 
born of faith and love. Let not the Master re- 
quire to say to any of us in the house where he 
is the guest, " Thou gavest me no kiss." We shall 
look into his face and remember what he has done 
for us. We shall recall again with reverent atten- 
tion the sacred story of his passion for the sons of 
men. We shall know again that fresh wonder of 
the soul, like the surprise of a little child, at the 
glory of his Cross. Our Lord who is our Guest 
shall have no " cold and measured welcome of the 
Pharisee." 

It would be no strange thing if some of us who 
sit here were to break an alabaster-box for Jesus 
Christ. "Love I much? I'm much forgiven." 
It may occur to some of us here that we have never 
done much for Christ. It may come upon us with 
almost overwhelming power that we have only 
done the ordinary things, the things we could scarce 
avoid doing, the duties that were plainly laid upon 
us. It may occur to some of us that we have neg- 
lected some of the honors of the house, some of 
the courtesies which only a forgiven heart can pay. 
It may appear, as we think of it, that we have had 
little enthusiasm, little overleaping joy in the heart, 
little of that eager, passionate, unrestrained love in 



The Honors of the House 171 

the soul, which at times will rise and go to meet the 
Master with a kiss, out of pure welcome in the 
heart; that will now and again " kiss the Son " — 
it is the Psalmist's phrase — as a token of sheer, 
strong, happy, undisturbed friendship, as a pledge 
of eager, willing, abounding loyalty in the soul. 
May this be the spirit of the sacred hour to which 
we are now come ! 



LOADS AND BURDENS 



" Each man shall bear his own burden." 

Galatians 6:5. 

" Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the 
law of Christ." 

Galatians 6:2. 



XI 
LOADS AND BURDENS 

Here are two texts of Scripture that appear to 
contradict one another. With one pen-stroke the 
Apostle Paul writes to the Galatian Christians, 
" Bear ye one another's burdens," and with almost 
the next stroke of the pen he says, " Each man 
shall bear his own burden." 

The contradiction, however, is only apparent, as 
a little study of the chapter, and especially of the 
Greek words used, will at once reveal. This clear- 
headed apostle does not write without measuring 
his words with great care, and his double statement 
is very helpful in understanding the subject of 
burden-bearing. 

" Each man shall bear his own burden." This 
is nature's law. It belongs to the constitution of 
things. 

When he wrote this sentence the apostle used 
a word which the Greeks were accustomed to em- 
ploy when they spoke of the freight or lading of 
175 



176 The Art of Sailing On 

a ship — phortion. Every man has his appropriate 
load or burden, his life-freight or lading, to carry. 
There is a burden in this sense for each of us. It 
belongs to the inner circle of life where each man 
dwells alone, in a solitude which no man can break. 
There may be mysteries and difficulties about this, 
but it is very plain that much of the meaning of 
life lies here. If life had no burden it would be 
a " dead level." Instead God has given to each 
man his task, his duty, his burden. 

No man has any right to ask me to bear his own 
burden, his own proper burden. Society is thrown 
into utter confusion when men begin to ask others 
to relieve them of the proper burden that belongs 
to them. I cannot do your work: you cannot do 
my work. Each of us must carry his own load of 
toil. Every philosophy, social, political, or reli- 
gious, is unsound that forgets our individuality and 
tries to melt us together in an indistinguishable 
mass. 

Now there are many evasions in one way and 
another of this law of the individual. There are 
always some who are unwilling to bear their share 
of toil. This is patent enough, and he who will 
not bear his own burden soon becomes a social 
burden. Of this class are the idlers, the ne'er-do- 
weels, the tramps, and all men who scamp their 



Loads and Burdens 177 

work or seek in whatsoever way to escape the bur- 
den that is rightly theirs. Of such persons the 
Scripture says with the utmost frankness, " If any 
will not work, neither let him eat." 

But these are not the only shifters of burdens. 
Other instances of evasion are less obvious but 
fully as real. Such are they for example who 
will not bear their burden of responsibility. In 
our day scientific men have preached the doctrine 
of heredity, and have pressed the theory so far 
that it is increasingly hard to hold men to the 
thought of individual responsibility. A man has 
an uncontrollable appetite for strong drink. Now- 
adays instead of preaching to such a one the sin- 
fulness of drunkenness and the individual re- 
sponsibility of the drunkard, soft preachers of 
science comfort and excuse him with atavism, which 
means literally grandfatherism. His grandfather 
or his great-grandfather had a strong appetite for 
drink. It has come to him in his blood; he cannot 
help it; he is scarcely responsible at all. And be- 
cause the theory has some truth in it, men are 
easily blinded to the other truth of individual re- 
sponsibility. No one can doubt that the Heavenly 
Father who knows us from the beginning has full 
sympathy for us in all that mingling of the ele- 
ments of life that comes in the course of the gen- 



178 The Art of Sailing On 

eratlons. Nevertheless his Book insists that each 
man must bear his own burden of responsibility. 

Still less obvious, but also fully as real, is that 
kind of shifting of burdens which comes when men 
evade the great decisions of life. It is manifest, 
for instance, in the important matter of religious 
decision that every man must bear his own burden. 
A man's father or his wife or his friend cannot 
make his decision for him. If they were willing 
to do so, it would be impossible, because a de- 
cision — a real decision — is something in which a 
man is absolutely alone. He may have many helps 
and helpers, but in the moment in which he makes 
a decision he enters into a solitude as great as that 
of an African forest. The appeal of the Gospel 
is always to individual men : " What think ye of 
Christ?" "Come unto me"; "Follow me"; 
" Open the door." 

If there be those of us who have been in this 
manner evading or postponing decision about 
Christ and his Gospel, let us say to them the words 
of this text : " Each man shall bear his own bur- 
den." Decision has a sharp edge and it cuts clear 
down to the heart, to the inner life of the man. 
What is your decision about Christ? 

Thus it is plain that men go through life like a 
ship sailing upon the high seas, each man with 



Loads and Burdens 179 

his own freight, his burden, to carry. This con- 
stitutes life and we cannot escape it. In that lading 
of our life's ship will be found for each of us our 
share of work, our share of responsibility, our 
share of problems, our share of decisions, and even 
our share of sorrows. There is a burden of sorrow 
that is mine own. " The heart knoweth its own 
bitterness." No man can cross the intimate line 
and enter the sacred precinct of another's heart 
where sorrow hath its throne. If there is mystery 
and pathos in this, there is also beneficence. It is 
no inconsiderable thing if a man can rise up with 
his burden of sorrow and say, " It is mine own," 
and determine therewith to be a better man. And 
of all this the sentence is written — " Each man 
shall bear his own freight " — bear it on across the 
high seas until eternity dawns upon the sight. This 
is the gospel of the personal burden. 

This is the gospel that many need to hear first 
of all. It is the gospel of duty, of independence 
and responsibility, of self-reliance and individuality. 
Rise up with your burden, whatever it is; throw 
off your lackadaisical air; do your part; fling away 
your idleness and despair; cease waiting upon 
others; bear your own burden, your own, your 
very own, the burden that belongs to you, the 
burden that was made for you, the burden without 



180 The Art of Sailing On 

which your life will even lack the sense of finish, 
the touch of creative completion. 

But this is not all. If it were all, life would 
be melancholy indeed. Mere laws of nature are 
inexorable. They work hardship, even catastro- 
phe. You shall see how men take advantage of 
this law of natural burden-bearing and leave their 
fellow-men unassisted in their distresses. In the 
Oriental world, in China, in India, in Palestine, 
men look at human disease and trouble and say with 
fatalistic precision, " It is their burden, and they 
must bear it." Therefore they build no hospitals, 
no refuges, no philanthropic institutions of any 
kind. Even in Christian lands men tend to fall 
back too easily upon the law of natural burden- 
bearing. They say, " Every man for himself, 
every man to his own burden. It is enough if a 
man can live his own life and bear his own bur- 
den. As for others, we cannot help, and ' let the 
Devil take the hindmost ' ! " 

Out of this grows that withering individualism, 
that dangerous selfishness, which is a blot upon our 
Christian civilization. 

Now the apostle's other direction is the assertion 
of a law that is higher than the law of nature, 
" Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the 
law of Christ." There is no contradiction. Nev- 



Loads and Burdens 181 

ertheless the two laws are brought into contrast 
with one another, that law of nature and this law 
of grace. 

You must bear your own burden because it be- 
longs to you. It is of the natural order of things. 
But Christ comes to establish a law that is higher 
than this, to ordain that you shall have sympathy 
and fellowship and love. This is Christ's law of 
burden-bearing. He says you shall not leave men 
alone. You shall not desert them or leave them 
unassisted in the hour of their distress. " Bear ye 
one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
Christ." 

As if to mark the distinction between the natural 
law of burden-bearing and Christ's law, the apos- 
tle has used another Greek word for burden — 
baros. It differs from the other word in that it 
suggests, not the freight of a ship which belongs 
to it rightly, but the weight that presses upon it 
from without — the trouble, the heaviness, of life. 
Indeed it is the very word from which we have 
constructed our word barometer. This useful in- 
strument measures the weight or heaviness of the 
atmosphere and thereby predicts the weather. 
Now we might paraphrase the sentence of the apos- 
tle, " Bear ye one another's trouble, bear ye one 
another's heaviness." Granted that there is a bur- 



1 82 The Art of Sailing On 

den which every man must bear for himself: that 
is his ship's lading. But his trouble, his weight — 
the pressure and heaviness of life upon him — you 
must not be careless of this. It is this burden that 
Christ's law requires us to bear, and in so doing 
to fulfil his law. 

In the case of the Galatians to whom the apostle 
was writing, the application was to the bearing of 
the burden of the faults of others. It is true that 
a man is responsible for his own faults and every 
man must bear that burden. But just here Christ's 
law steps in. You must not leave a man to his 
faults; you must help him. You must try to bear 
his burden, and so fulfil Christ's law. " Brethren, 
even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye who 
are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gen- 
tleness, looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 
Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law 
of Christ." 

How divine and wonderful is this law of Christ I 
What beneficent results it has brought into the life 
of the world! What transformations it works in 
the feelings and deeds of all mankind ! That the 
world is as good a world as it is is due in large 
measure to Christ's law for burden-bearing. 

Glance back through the centuries and see how 
this law of Christ has entered into human affairs 



Loads and Burdens 183 

and taught men how to bear not only their own but 
one another's burdens. 

In the Roman amphitheater matrons looked 
down from the galleries upon gladiatorial contests 
and turned their thumbs down as a sign to the victor 
to kill his opponent. In that day there was no 
sympathy and men knew little about bearing one 
another's burdens. In that day, as in pagan lands 
to-day, no hospitals were built, no asylums, no 
refuges for infirmity and age. But when Christ 
came his Gospel touched that undeveloped spring 
in the human heart called Sympathy, and men be- 
gan to be aware of the burdens of their fellow-men. 

In early mythology there is the symbolic story of 
Niobe. Niobe had lost all her twelve children, 
slain by the darts of Apollo and Artemis. Then 
the proud, hard heart of Niobe broke and her 
tears flowed in a stream. In this way the ancients 
pictured winter and summer. When the rays of 
the sun strike the children of Winter, the months, 
then old Winter, icy and hard, begins to melt, and 
there flows out a stream that makes glad the earth 
with the warmth and bounty of the summer-time. 
Once the heart of man contained winter; it was 
hard and icy toward his fellow-man; but when 
Christ came he wrought a great softening of hearts, 
and he who was himself the great burden-bearer 



1 84 The Art of Sailing On 

taught men to regard his law and to be themselves 
burden-bearers. 

Slow indeed has been the progress of this 
thought of Jesus Christ, for against it all the re- 
luctance, all the selfishness of the human heart, has 
been arraigned. Until a late date England fos- 
tered an inhuman system of imprisonment for debt, 
and her prisons and prison laws were severe and 
thoughtless to the last degree. Then God sent 
John Howard to England to awaken the nation to 
the duty of bearing the burden of the faults of the 
criminal classes in the name of him who said: " I 
was sick and in prison, and ye visited me." 

In England also, almost within our own mem- 
ory, the condition of workmen, operatives in fac- 
tories and miners toiling beneath the ground, was 
pitiable in the extreme. Women and little children 
were working long hours at tasks which were far 
beyond their strength. Then God sent the sev- 
enth Earl of Shaftesbury, a true burden-bearer 
among men, endowed with wealth and also with 
sympathy, and when he spoke England awoke and 
by her new factory laws and laws for mines and 
mining began anew to bear the burdens of man- 
kind. 

In our own country, later still, need has been 
found for this law of Christ. For when it was 



Loads and Burdens 185 

discovered that prisoners issuing from prison were 
everywhere frowned upon and the doors of society 
and of business closed against them, a sweet-faced 
woman of the Salvation Army stood forth in plain 
dress and scoop bonnet and said, " We must help 
bear the burdens of these men who have been in 
prison, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Much has 
been done, but much more should be done. A man 
called one day to see the minister, whether an im- 
postor or not the minister could not tell. The 
story he told was pitiful. He had spent years in 
prison for forgery and had there resolved upon a 
better life. When he came forth from prison he 
obtained a position and wrought honestly until de- 
tectives followed him and told his story to his em- 
ployers. Time after time this was done until he 
felt himself driven to the wall. It was Victor 
Hugo's story of Jean Valjean over again, who, 
driven from inn to inn and from door to door, at 
length took refuge in a dog's kennel, only to find 
that beasts as well as men were against him. 

Not yet has society fully learned Christ's law of 
burden-bearing. Nevertheless this law is more and 
more beating its way into human affairs. It is the 
true Christian socialism, which means nothing more 
than Christ's opposition to every theory or act of 
society that pronounces Paul's sentence, " Each man 



1 86 The Art of Sailing On 

shall bear his own burden," and leaves the matter 
there at the mercy of a distressing and destructive 
individualism. Christ insists, and Paul after him, 
that society must go farther and bear the burdens 
of other men. This simple, magnificent law of 
Christ is the strongest force in civilization to-day. 
Winter slowly leaves the heart and summer dawns. 
Our Gospel spells — brotherhood. 

Ten thousand hospitals and other institutions 
of philanthropy proclaim that men are trying to 
fulfil Christ's law of burden-bearing. It is a new 
age to-day, and growing newer, despite its black 
clouds, because men are bearing burdens as never 
before. You say, " The world is growing worse, 
is it not? " And the answer is " Yes," if it is to 
be judged by the boldness of its sins. But the an- 
swer is " No," if it is to be judged by its quantity 
of burden-bearing, by the scores of ways in which 
Christ has taught us to restore one another and 
care for one another's heaviness in life. 

In this era of burden-bearing, therefore, our very 
language has been enriched by new words and 
phrases. The word egoism was an earlier addition 
to the language, but later years have brought us the 
counterpart of that, altruism. Ten thousand books, 
papers, pamphlets, and sermons to-day have as 
their theme " the Parliament of Man " of which 



Loads and Burdens 187 

the English Tennyson wrote. And because these 
words and phrases are upon many lips and in many 
hearts we know that Christ's law is at work. The 
peculiarity of our day is that men are concerned 
with every kind of problem " from the existence of 
God to the sanitation of a village." 

For one thing, Christ's law of burden-bearing 
makes indifference impossible. Our Christian faith 
praises strength, yet it calls for champions of the 
cause of the weak, because it stands written in the 
little Book that is greater than all others, " We 
that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the 
weak." 

Wealth is often selfish and indifferent, but more 
and more wealth is learning the lesson of burden- 
bearing, and many of earth's noblemen and noble- 
women are they who are endowed with wealth. 

One of the perils of great cities to thoughtful 
and good men is the peril of indifference to the 
multitude. Indifference brings hardening, and one 
of the most difficult things we have to contend with 
in our modern cities is the hardening of the heart 
of the individual toward the multitude. Their 
cares do not concern us, their burdens do not af- 
flict us. Do we not know that " the loss of pity 
is a return to savagery without the excuse of sav- 
agery " ? All the more must men remember him 



1 88 The Art of Sailing On 

and live in the company of him who when he saw 
the multitude had compassion on them. 

All this emphasizes the fitness of the Christian 
Gospel to teach and guide men. For the Gospel 
defines our mission to one another. It affirms, not 
only that each man is responsible for himself, but 
that he is responsible for others. What a strange, 
unworldly doctrine, that we are responsible for 
others' faults ! This is what Paul is writing to the 
Galatians. It was a new thought when Christ in- 
troduced it into the world. We are to restore one 
another, build one another up, share the burden of 
one another's weaknesses, and help in the building 
of one another's characters. 

The faults of others, the sins of the world, are 
not merely a target for attack. " Ye who are 
spiritual restore such a one." Christians cannot 
live in an atmosphere of criticism and contempt. 
Christianity teaches men how to live, but that is 
not all, it teaches men how to live with others, 
which is even a more difficult art. 

Years ago, twenty or more, James Anthony 
Froude printed the " Life and Letters of Thomas 
Carlyle." The book created a sensation, because 
it appeared from it that the gifted author had 
grievously wronged his wife and made her life 
utterly unhappy. Reading this book, with all their 



Loads and Burdens 189 

admiration for " the greatest and wildest genius of 
his time," men felt a certain keen disappointment 
in him. Within a few years another book has been 
published in two volumes, " The New Letters and 
Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," revealing to 
some extent the other side of the story. While 
these two gifted persons, Thomas Carlyle and Jane 
Welsh Carlyle, loved one another with an undying 
affection, yet they permitted certain elements of 
disturbance to come between them. They were too 
much in fear of one another and were lacking in 
sympathy and understanding. It was diamond cut 
diamond. They were too merciless, too harsh, too 
severe with one another. It was too easy to say 
hard things, and they had too little charity for 
one another. They were guilty both of them of 
the sin of scorn. In short they knew too little of 
the duty of bearing the burden of one another's 
faults. It is certain that two persons, even though 
they love one another, cannot live happily under 
the same roof unless they learn something of 
Christ's law of burden-bearing and try to bear the 
burden of one another's faults. 

This is how practical the Gospel is. It has a 
grand message of social amelioration and it has 
also a very personal message of individual help- 
fulness. As men learn the law of Christ they will 



190 The Art of Sailing On 

more and more be willing to put their shoulders 
beneath the world's burden, and so fulfil the law of 
Christ. It is called the law of Christ because it 
was the law which he fulfilled in his own life and 
death. He shifted no burden of humanity. He 
bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and he 
took the burden of our faults as well. With what 
mighty emphasis, therefore, may Jesus Christ, the 
Great Burden-Bearer, through his apostle turn to 
us and say, " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so 
fulfil the law of Christ." Loads belong to indi- 
viduals; burdens belong to us all. 



BLESSED BE LAUGHTER! 



" Then was our mouth filled with laughter." 

Psalm 126: 2. 



XII 
BLESSED BE LAUGHTER! 

Blessed be laughter! It will strike many of 
us as a very worldly topic. Nevertheless we may 
find that it has spiritual and heavenly bearings, as 
everything that is worth while in this world is apt 
to have. If there were anywhere in all the range 
of God's universe " a land of no laughter," to use 
an imaginative poet's phrase, life both here and 
hereafter would be less attractive. 

Imagine if you can a world without laughter ! 
Now and then we hear of a house without laughter. 
We enter it almost as we would enter a charnel- 
house. There is something dank and dark about 
such a place; it causes one to shiver; it gives one 
a creeping sensation; it makes the heart cold. In 
such a place we are apt to utter this new Beatitude: 
" Blessed be laughter." For it is true that the 
home without laughter, without mirth and humor, 
lacks one of God's benedictions. 

There was a home where the husband and wife 
had had a quarrel over some trivial thing. The 
193 



194 The Art of Sailing On 

one threw a bitter taunt at the other, and a harsh 
reply was made. Then they vowed each of them 
that they would never speak again the one to the 
other. So they lapsed into silence, which con- 
tinued for days and weeks and months and even 
for years. Can you imagine a greater human ab- 
surdity than this — two human beings living together 
under the same roof and pitting themselves against 
each other by silence! If there had been a saving 
bit of humor in that home the situation would have 
changed very soon. One day the saving sense of 
humor came to the rescue. They were seated at 
table, eating their meal in dreadful silence. Sud- 
denly the absurdity of the situation came over the 
husband, and he burst out laughing. Then the 
wife joined in, and they laughed immoderately for 
ten minutes. It is needless to say that from that 
time on conversation flowed in a stream as it had 
done of yore. 

You will have your quiet smile at this incident, 
but be sure that you are not yourself practising 
somewhere and somehow in life some little piece of 
human absurdity which would melt away like snow 
before the sun if only the saving grace of humor 
should come to the rescue. Blessed be laughter 1 
It has dissipated many a grievance and prevented 
many a quarrel. It has often cleared the air when 



Blessed Be Laughter I 195 

a storm has been gathering and has proved a pro- 
phylactic against bitterness in the soul. 

Half our troubles and misunderstandings with 
one another would pass away if we but had the 
grace to smile in the face of them and melt the 
bitterness out of them with the warmth and light 
of good-humor. When next the temptation comes 
to be at odds with another human soul, try the 
preventive of laughter. It was Charles Lamb, in 
that quaint humor of his that has saved the world 
much pain, who exclaimed one day to a friend who 
was upon the point of presenting another man to 
him, " Oh, don't introduce me to that man ! I 
know I'm going to hate him ! " Hatred in the 
heart is next to impossible when the mouth is full 
of laughter, as Lamb's was when he said this. If 
these things are not worth saying now and then 
in a Christian pulpit, it is proof that our doctrine 
is still in the clouds, and has not yet learned to 
go on all fours on the solid earth of human affairs. 

We can go a step further and say that in a house 
or a land of no laughter physical ills as well as 
moral ills are apt to accumulate. Physicians cor- 
roborate this. Old Dr. Hall, as wise in human 
logic as he was in physic, used often to prescribe 
a " pill of laughter," while " John Ploughman," 
full of the quaint wisdom of men and things, af- 



196 The Art of Sailing On 

firms that we need not one doctor but three. They 
are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman. 

There is no doubt that laughter is one of God's 
automatic plans for keeping us in health. Who 
knows how many fevers and humors of the blood, 
how many miasms and contagions of the air, are 
rendered harmless by the hygiene of laughter? 
Does not the book of Proverbs declare that " he 
that is of a cheerful heart hath a continual feast "? 
It goes even further, and says, " A cheerful heart 
is a good medicine." " There is not the remotest 
corner or little inlet of the minute blood vessels of 
the human body that does not feel some wavelet 
from the convulsion of good hearty laughter. . . . 
The blood moves more rapidly, and conveys a dif- 
ferent impression to all the organs of the body, as 
it visits them on that particular mystic journey 
when the man is laughing, from what it does at 
other times." 

Blessed be laughter! Unhappily our times are 
not favorable to laughter. True there are multi- 
tudes who are in hot pursuit of laughter. Comic 
theaters are crowded, and the comic press has a 
multitude of patrons : but such laughter is too often 
" inane, frivolous, and senseless." Hearty laugh- 
ter — laughter that comes out of the inner depths of 
feeling, out of a vast appreciation and humor of 



Blessed Be Laughter! 197 

life — is at a premium to-day. Men are tempted 
to neglect God's medicine chest, and therefore they 
forget to laugh. The cares of the world multiply 
and the heart's merriment dies away. Ten thou- 
sand pities for the man who grows every hour into 
the world's successes, but loses meanwhile his 
heart's fresh and bounding joy! We lift a quiet 
prayer to-day in behalf of the weary men of affairs 
who are in danger of losing the power to laugh. 

But the things we are saying to-day are being 
said quite too lightly in some quarters. There is 
an easy-going philosophy of smiles and laughter 
which commends itself to many who do not take 
the trouble to think very far. Teachers have 
arisen who are mere philosophers of good cheer. 
They wave aside with a motion of the hand the 
solid facts of life and the serious doctrines of grace, 
and tell us that all we need to do is simply to smile 
and be brave, and all will come right. If grief 
come, let us but smile in the face of grief, and grief 
will dissolve away! If perplexity overtake us, 
smile on, laugh on, and perplexity will cease ! All 
this is plausible: it is even fascinating; but it is not 
adequate. There is a time when laughter will die 
away on the lips. 

The Scripture has a score of wise counsels on 
this subject. There is " a time to weep, and a time 



198 The Art of Sailing On 

to laugh." Laughter alone cannot produce great 
men and noble women. Sorrow has a deeper, finer 
touch than joy. It is noticed that the Son of Man 
is never said to laugh or smile, although it is often 
implied, as on that occasion when he took little 
children into his arms and blessed them. It was not 
necessary for the Gospels to say that Jesus smiled. 
But the Scripture does take pains to tell us that 
he was " a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief," and that he suffered agony in the Garden 
of Gethsemane. Sorrow leads us deeper into life 
than joy, and the far-off interest of tears is greater 
than that of laughter. 

So it is that the great poets have not been men 
of laughter only, but of sorrow as well. In the 
Valley of the Shadow beautiful flowers have sprung 
forth. It was sorrow that brought forth Tenny- 
son's " In Memoriam " and Milton's " Lycidas." 
It was the pensive spirit in man that gave birth to 
Gray's " Elegy in a Country Churchyard," while 
Emerson's " profound, passionate, lovely Thren- 
ody on the death of his little son " was the out- 
growth of an early tragedy that touched the poet's 
soul, leaving him, as he said, lacking " a piece of 
sunshine well worth my watching from morning 
to night." 

Great souls learn to suffer and be strong. Noth- 



Blessed Be Laughter! 199 

ing — not even the most fascinating doctrine of 
men — can permanently cajole the spirit of man into 
a theory of universal laughter, laughter for pain, 
laughter for grief, laughter for all the serious 
problems of life ! Sorrow is a wonderful teacher, 
and thinking of this our Lord pronounced a bene- 
diction upon those who sorrow not in vain: 
" Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall 
laugh." On the other hand he spoke of woe for 
those who laugh now, who never grow serious in 
their souls, and live on in the hollow mockery of 
laughter unto the end: "Woe unto you, ye that 
laugh now ! for ye shall mourn and weep." 

In the New Testament laughter is mentioned 
very seldom, but it is spoken of once in a very piti- 
ful way. It was when Jesus the Master of men, 
he who was able to make death, in Tennyson's 
phrase, " a laughable impossibility," entered the 
chamber of death where the little daughter of 
Jairus lay and prepared to raise her up. We are 
told that the people " laughed him to scorn." 
Nothing is so appalling in all of human life as 
the hollow mockery and scorn of those who laugh 
on heedlessly amid the serious questions of life. 
Other men laugh too, but they have learned a 
larger truth, that sorrow and seriousness are always 
lurking beneath laughter. " Even in laughter," the 



zoo The Art of Sailing On 

Proverbialist of the Old Testament declares, " the 
heart is sorrowful." 

How true it is that there is always an element 
of sadness at the heart of things ! Men who are 
learning God's lessons for life know this, and their 
laughter has no hollow sound, no mocking insin- 
cerity toward the solemnity of life. The second 
Psalm paints a very dire picture; it is a picture of 
men in high places, men of power, men of vast 
opportunity, who have never really faced the sol- 
emn things of life, who are concerned only about 
building up their own little selfish kingdom; and 
who laugh away the restraints of God's Kingdom, 
crying out in their glee, " Let us break their bonds 
asunder and cast away their cords from us ! " 
Then occurs a solemn and startling sentence of 
the Word of God, one of the few places where 
laughter is attributed to God : " He that sitteth 
in the heavens will laugh : the Lord will have them 
in derision." They who never have a solemn 
thought about life and eternity, who laugh their 
way through the world, untouched by the serious 
meaning at the heart of things, how can it be other- 
wise than that they will some time be objects of 
the world's derision and of the laughter of God? 

When Jesus Christ hung upon the cross of Cal- 
vary there were those who passed by wagging their 



Blessed Be Laughter! 201 

heads and went laughing on their way. How hide- 
ous is the sound of human laughter in the presence 
of the sorrows of the Son of Man ! Oh, it is the 
heart of fools that is in the " House of Mirth," 
when Christ hangs upon the Cross tasting death 
for every man ! It is the crackling of thorns under 
a pot that rattles noisily, but soon burns away to 
the ashes of sorrow — sorrow that the world cannot 
cure. " Woe unto you, ye that laugh now ! for ye 
shall mourn and weep." 

Blessed be laughter! These qualifications do 
but help us to understand the truth. Let us say it 
now with all the emphasis and joy of the " glorious 
Gospel of the blessed God." What if we say that 
ours is a Gospel of laughter in the soul, that 
Christ's Kingdom is a kingdom of laughter for the 
heart of man? This cannot mean for any of us 
that the Gospel is a mere counsel of merriment or 
artificial joy for men. On the contrary God's people 
are called to walk in the footsteps of the Son of 
Man, and his way is often the way of sorrow and 
pain. It must mean for us all, however, that the 
wells of salvation are wells of joy, and that from 
such as these we may draw water for all the days 
and hours. It must mean for us, as in the sublime 
vision of Isaiah, that Christ is here with his people 
" to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil 



202 The Art of Sailing On 

of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the 
spirit of heaviness." 

Blessed be laughter! — the laughter which Christ 
has made possible in the soul of man. Believers 
and seers of the Old Testament knew this laughter 
of the heart when they beheld the promise afar off. 
When the promise of a son was given to Abraham, 
it is written that Abraham " fell upon his face 
and laughed." And when the child Isaac was born 
to Abraham and Sarah — the child of their old age 
— his mother said, " God hath made me to laugh; 
every one that hears will laugh with me." The 
pure joys of life, the affections and hopes of do- 
mestic relations, the prosperities and successes of 
toil, the gladness and rewards of friendship — let 
us hold these as from God, and laugh before God 
daily and go upon our way rejoicing! 

And when sorrow comes and lays its touch upon 
the heart, and the heart shrinks with cold and fear, 
let us ever keep the heart's secret joy, and rejoice 
still before the Lord, who giveth " the oil of joy 
for mourning." 

The Psalmists too — one and another of them — 
taught this lesson of God's laughter in the soul: 
" He hath put a new song in my mouth," " Then 
was our mouth filled with laughter." This was 
their Song of Deliverance, and it echoed on through 



Blessed Be Laughter! 203 

days and years, by the lips and pens of prophet 
and singer and seer, until Christ came. 

Why did he come as a little child, if it was not 
to fill our mouths with laughter, to touch and open 
true springs of joy in the human heart? Listen 
to the joyous laughter in the words of the aged 
Simeon when the child was brought to the Temple : 
" Now lettest thou thy servant depart, Lord, ac- 
cording to thy word, in peace : for mine eyes have 
seen thy salvation." 

How truly we can say of Christ, " He has filled 
our mouths with laughter! " For he has opened 
up for us a very world of joy and has taught us 
how to rejoice. He has put a new song in our 
mouth and has made us both sing and laugh in our 
souls. The world's laughter is often very hollow; 
it is like " the crackling of thorns under a pot." 
Christ puts meaning into laughter, gives reality to 
joy. He hath made me glad! 

Think of his teaching about God the Heavenly 
Father. It is not weariness to believe in God, but 
joy, gladness, laughter in the soul. It is light to 
the mind and wings to the feet. He taught men to 
enjoy God. Is he not "Our Father"? Has he 
not sent his Son and Heir to us? Has he not in 
his wise counsel sought the peace and joy of men? 
Surely we can say of all that Jesus has told us about 



204 The Art of Sailing On 

God and life and salvation and eternity, " Then 
was our mouth filled with laughter." Think of 
those elect words of his: "Let not your heart be 
troubled : believe in God, believe also in me. In 
my Father's house are many mansions." Homes, 
abiding-places! These words should never make 
us solemn and sad. Rather they should make us 
glad, stirring the heart to laughter. 

Blessed be laughter ! In the Kingdom of Christ 
this beatitude has a thousand meanings. There 
is a traditional saying of an early century about 
Christ that has come down to us : " He that is near 
me is near the fire." There is joy in the heart 
where Christ is and there is laughter in the mouth. 
Joy is integral in the Gospel. You cannot untwist 
the colors of the rainbow, nor can you take joy 
away from the Gospel. " With joy shall ye draw 
water out of the wells of salvation." Oh, the 
Cross is solemn and portentous ! Its shadows lie 
across the world, its sadness echoes in human bos- 
oms. " A man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief." Strange and wonderful anomaly — this 
Man who tasted death for every man has taught 
us to laugh! Down into the depths of human life 
he went, its sorrow, its need, its pain, its sin, in 
order that he might come forth again to give us 
the oil of joy for weeping and a garment of praise 



Blessed Be Laughter! 205 

for heaviness. Oh, he is the Master of the soul's 
laughter, he is our Peace, our Light, our Joy, our 
Life. 

And because his very Kingdom is Joy, let us 
often have this beatitude upon our lips : " Blessed 
be laughter ! " Let us enter the Kingdom like little 
children, and let us strive to keep our hearts fresh 
and new in the service of Christ. And although 
we grow in knowledge and put away childish 
things, let us never cease to be as little children in 
the Kingdom, free-hearted, glad, eager, our mouths 
filled with laughter. May his tasks never be 
drudgery to us. May we learn to laugh as we work 
and laugh as we give. Is it not written, " God 
loveth a cheerful giver"? Stop upon that word. 
It is hilaros in Greek — hilarious, glad, laughing! 

Oh, to have such an interest in the Kingdom of 
my Lord that when I am called to any duty of 
his cause there shall be spiritual laughter in my 
soul ! Oh, to live in the midst of the years in such 
a way that when the end draws on and the curtain 
lifts, the laughter of my soul may turn out to be 
the song of my Lord, the song that shall never die 
away ! 



THE SACRAMENT OF SPRING 



" And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? 
Consider the lilies of the field, how thy grow: they 
toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, 
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the 
grass of the field, zvhich to-day is, and to-morrow is 
cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe 
you, O ye of little faith ? " 

Matt. 6: 28-30. 



XIII 

THE SACRAMENT OF SPRING 

On this goodly day in the month of April one 
remembers his Chaucer, in the first lines of the 
Prologue : 

" When that Aprile with his showers swoot 
The drought of March hath pierced to the root, 
And bathed every vein in such liquor 
Of which virtue engendered is the flower." 

Sweet and gracious as are the words of earthly 
poets, none can ever equal the words of that Mas- 
ter of nature and men, who, looking out upon the 
glory of the Father's world, said " Consider the 
lilies." The springtime has come again, and we 
need his words in the fresh new days of this young 
season to interpret its meaning to us. There is a 
new feeling in the heart to-day; something here in 
our pulses responds to the thought of Jesus Christ. 
How simply he speaks, yet with what thorough 
209 



210 The Art of Sailing On 

understanding of all the heart's emotions! Shall 
we let him lead us forth in this bright new era of 
time to teach us some new lessons, which are also 
old lessons, about the Father's world and his chil- 
dren who dwell in it? 

There is first of all the surprise and the rebuke 
of a new season. This is not in his words, never- 
theless it is the spirit of his words: " Consider the 
lilies of the field." A little while ago there was no 
promise of this marvellous thing. It was winter 
then, and the earth was cold and hard. Winter 
is an atheistic time; God seems to have gone away. 
It is a term we use to describe cold things, things 
hard and disagreeable and insoluble. The great 
bard speaks of " the winter of our discontent." 
Men tell of winter in the heart, winter in their 
emotions, winter in the enterprises and institutions 
of the world. It is a symbolism we use to acknowl- 
edge our skepticism, and to say furtively that we 
do not know whether life will survive or not. In 
the winter men are skeptics, because they cannot 
see, because there is a pall of death everywhere. 

Now the Master comes among the skeptics of 
the world and says, " Consider the lilies." Look 
out now upon the earth. The miracle has been 
wrought again. The earth is all green and soft 
and tender once more. 



The Sacrament of Spring 211 

" For, lo, the winter is past: 
The rain is over and gone: 
The flowers appear on the earth: 
The time of the singing of birds is come, 
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land." 

Is there not a new feeling in your heart to-day? 
It is the voice of a new season. It is the miracle of 
God's creation returning again. It is the rebuke 
to all our doubt and atheism. It is the Father of 
Lights once more shining upon us, he with whom 
there is no variableness nor shadow that is cast by 
turning. The springtime is here again. Has win- 
ter been in your heart? "Consider the lilies." 
Winter has gone away. The time for life and 
eagerness has come back again, the time for emo- 
tion, for overflowing tenderness, for the release of 
all repressed and frozen instincts of the heart. I 
know that this feeling is in my heart to-day, and my 
Lord knows it, for he says, " Consider the lilies." 

He means to tell us in his own gracious way as 
well that the world is not old, but new. There afe 
so many who forget this. The theologian talks 
about this sin-cursed world. The man of many 
affairs talks about this weary, burdensome world. 
The pessimist speaks about this worn-out world. 
But Jesus Christ talks of birds singing and flowers 
blooming. This is the difference between our Mas- 



212 The Art of Sailing On 

ter and other masters. He knew all about the 
curse, nevertheless he knew that there was a Way. 
He was not dumb to the confused and jangling 
voices of Sin and Sorrow and Pain : nevertheless 
he knew that there was a Father of Lights. He 
knew that oftentimes the world seems old and worn 
and troubled to men, but he knew in reality that 
the world is young. 

You do not find Jesus Christ talking about things 
growing old. You find him thinking and speaking 
of things growing young again. This is his mes- 
sage to us : " Behold, I make all things new." You 
have been dwelling upon the problems too much. 
It is so that the world grows old to you. Jesus 
bids us look out and look up. Come away from 
your problems a moment, come out with me into 
the fields and " consider the lilies." Back there 
it is a weary world; out here it is a fresh world. 
Back there everything is ancient and worn; out here 
everything is young and fresh and new. Atheism 
is often relieved by flowers better than by books. 
If you are weary of men and affairs, if the face 
of humanity looks haggard and the problems are 
darker each day, " Come away with me," says 
Jesus Christ, " and consider the lilies." 

I think he is speaking to jaded minds. Yester- 
day I was tired. It was winter. My task seemed 



The Sacrament of Spring 213 

heavy to me. I was troubled with detail, with cir- 
cumstance, with sheer worn-outness. To-day I am 
not weary. There is a new feeling tugging at my 
heart. I have heard the words of my Lord, and 
he understands ! He knows that what a man needs, 
when his task seems heavy and the world about 
him seems old and dreary, is not to sit down and 
study his problems, but to go forth and meet the 
rich, glorious facts of God's love and grace. 

And so he is saying to you and me, " Consider 
the lilies of the field." 

He is telling us that we have not yet seen all. 
He is bidding us take a little time to consider. He 
is reminding us that if it took the forces of the 
universe and the shining of a thousand suns to make 
one lily, then it may be worth our while down in 
this busy world of ours to stop and consider the 
lily. This feeling is in my heart to-day. I find 
that I have not done justice to God's works. I 
have glided over them and have accepted them as 
a matter of course. All surprise has gone out of 
them. Why, I can actually take one of these flow- 
ers and break it in pieces and scatter it or cast it 
into the oven. That is how thoughtless and how 
lacking in wonder I am. I can actually look at it 
and think how beautiful it is, but never ask any 
questions about it, never express any wonder about 



214 The Art of Sailing On 

it. That is how dense and unfeeling my mind is. 
Surprise has gone out; it is a matter of course. 

Now to men in that state Jesus Christ comes 
with his message about the new world and the new 
season and the new flower. He wants to stir our 
minds with surprise once more. He wants to 
awaken us out of all our dullness, all our sluggish- 
ness, all our coldness and our oldness, and make us 
see that here is something new, something gracious, 
something wonderful, that we have not fully 
known. " Consider the lilies! " A rare poet has 
caught this thought of nature's surprise — 

" O little bulb, uncouth, 

Ragged and rusty brown, 
Have you some dew of youth? 

Have you a crimson gown ? 
Plant me and see 
What I shall be— 
God's fine surprise 
Before your eyes! 

" O fuzzy ugliness, 

Poor helpless, crawling worm, 
Can any loveliness 

Be in that sluggish form? 
Hide me and see 
What I shall be— 
God's bright surprise 
Before your eyes! " 



The Sacrament of Spring 215 

When the world seems young men delight in it 
and learn how friendly and rich it is. Jesus Christ 
says consider, and therefore Christianity makes 
men students, and sets them to exploring the rich 
stores of nature and the deep secrets of the world. 
In the seventeenth century a quaint and gentle per- 
son named Izaak Walton, a London shopkeeper, 
wrote a simple book of nature called " The Com- 
pleat Angler." And it may be questioned whether 
even Baxter's " Saints' Rest " or Bunyan's " Pil- 
grim's Progress " has had a larger mission to per- 
form than this pleasant, quaint little book of Izaak 
Walton's, which took men away from the dusty 
streets and from musty dwellings into the 'fields and 
woods, to the banks of streams and the companion- 
ship of birds and beasts and fishes. 

It is not the theologian alone who can bring us 
to God. We read Hooker and Baxter and Bunyan 
and Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards and 
Luther and Calvin and John Knox, and we thank 
God for these mighty men of theological valor. 
They have seen God through his Word and through 
the minds and hearts of men. We need also some 
who see God in the flower, in the green field, in 
the brook and the mountain stream, in the cloud 
and meadow, in the robin and the skylark. We 
need those teachers as well who " dwell by the 



216 The Art of Sailing On 

rugged pine," who rejoice in blossom-time, who un- 
derstand the sacrament of spring, who wander on 
the summer hills, and who never cease to be sur- 
prised at finding the wakerobin in the valley. 

It is remarkable that where the Gospel goes, 
bearing Christ's " consider " upon its lips, men are 
filled with the spirit of inquiry. Stagnation comes 
with man-made faiths. Mohammedanism builds 
no laboratories, endows no agricultural colleges. 
In Syria to-day men are still scratching the earth 
with stick plows drawn by camel or donkey or cow. 
Christianity puts away the crooked stick and makes 
a steel ploughshare in its stead. In Egypt three 
thousand years ago, according to the monuments, 
the fellahin were lifting the water of the Nile in 
buckets and pouring it for irrigation on the land, 
just as they are doing to-day. But representatives 
of a Christian nation in recent times have entered 
that ancient land and are teaching the natives the 
use of dams and pumps. Soon that ancient valley 
will blossom like the rose. 

If you would know the fruits of the Gospel, look 
not only at churches and schools and missions; look 
also at the fields, the granaries, the laboratories, 
the dictionaries, the arts and sciences. Christ said, 
" Consider," and wherever men have caught his 
spirit they have sat down to study, and have risen 



The Sacrament of Spring 217 

up to make new tools and manufacture new imple- 
ments, to write new books and endow new insti- 
tutions. 

Hear also the Lord's emphasis upon Beauty 
and Simplicity. " Consider the lilies of the field! " 
It would have been better, says the practical man, 
if the Master had said, " Consider the grains of 
the fields." This is a species of higher criticism 
which belongs to wall-eyed men, who lack in sen- 
timent, to whom a post is better than a plant be- 
cause a post will help to build a fence, to whom 
a flower is a pretty ornament, to be sure, but noth- 
ing very practical. Let us thank God that there 
are some folks in this workaday world who are 
unpractical enough to love beauty! 

Our Lord himself was of this temper. Looking 
out over the plain where he stood with his disci- 
ples, he saw the flowers growing above the grain. 
Nor was it a mere wee bit flower that blushed in 
modest beauty in a corner of the field. It was the 
showiest, brightest among them all that he chose — 
it was a splendid gladiolus, all arrayed in pinkish 
purple or violet, purple and blue — royal colors! 
Or it was a rich iris that he saw, gorgeous flower ! 
" Consider the lilies! " He spoke of royal beauty, 
for he bade them remember that Solomon in all his 
royal pomp and glory was not arrayed like one 



218 The Art of Sailing On 

of these. Come look at one of them ! White and 
red and yellow and purple. Solomon's royal gar- 
ments were man-made: these are God-made. He 
is saying to us, " God has given us beauty; let us 
rejoice in it." All ye host of practical men, listen 
to this. All ye workaday folk who are never happy 
unless you are poking your heads into some musty 
volume of figures, who have no thrills of emotion 
except such as come from the clink of gold and 
silver, who think that the only values in the world 
are such as can be shut up in steel safes and reck- 
oned in cold figures, come, all ye, and listen to this 
Master of men as he bids them look at the gorgeous 
beauty of a flower! 

There is value here too, he seems to say, untold 
value, unsearchable riches, that men, careless men, 
despise, but which thoughtful, loving, reverent men 
will make much of. Come, all busy folk, all oc- 
cupied people, all sordid ones, all ambitious, grasp- 
ing men and women — come, consider the lilies, look 
at the value of this thing which God has made. 

Its beauty is in its simplicity. Christ is calling 
men back to this ancient truth, which, alas! is al- 
ways in danger of eluding our human grasp. Our 
modern world is rapidly losing it. We indulge mis- 
taken notions of value. Nowadays a dress or a hat 
must forget the ancient law of simplicity and grow 



The Sacrament of Spring 219 

to be a nine-days' wonder. That is our mistaken sense 
of value in dress. Nowadays a rich man builds a 
house, and forgetting the simple lines of archi- 
tecture, he builds a Moorish palace, or a palace on 
the Rhine, and calls it " home." Amid all our 
mushroom complexity, our growing taste for gaudy 
display and social harness, the Master of men tells 
us that the secret of beauty after all is in a certain 
great simplicity, a certain winsomeness in the soul 
of things, a certain delight in gentleness, a certain 
joy in sentiment. Color? Oh, yes, the lily was 
gorgeously arrayed. Form and carriage? Oh, 
yes, it stood stately and majestic, waving its head 
above the grain. Pride? Oh, yes, it was the 
proudest of them all that grew in Gennesaret. 
Oh, yes, but with it all a vast simplicity is here, a 
quiet, deep contentment of soul and a pure health 
and wealth in the inner being of it, that speaks the 
truth about human value. " Even Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these." 

Let God's simple things teach us thus the true 
value of life. Let not men count themselves rich 
only when they have an ample store. Let them 
rather ask about the inward adorning of the soul 
and the growth of their hearts according to the 
measure of the simple things of Christ and his 
Kingdom. For our Lord's " consider " is also an 



220 The Art of Sailing On 

appeal for growth. " Consider the lilies of the 
field, how they grow." • 

To-day men are asking a thousand questions 
about growth. " Consider," says the Master, and 
the gardener begins to study seeds and planting and 
the culture of all growing things. " Consider," 
says Christ, and the farmer begins to study seasons 
and crops and rotations and fertilizers and soils, 
and to plan more largely for returning harvests. 
" Consider," says the Lord, and the botanist begins 
to study with glass and analysis, naming pistil and 
stamen and calyx and corolla, and arranging them 
all, from the greatest to the least, in families, in 
genera and species, and learning also the strange 
story of pollen and sex and fertilization. " Con- 
sider," says the Master, and enlightened nations 
organize departments of agriculture, call experts to 
the study of trees and forestry, grains and plants 
and soils, flowers and fruits, and all things that 
grow in God's world. 

Ah ! now we can see how beauty and utility are 
intertwined. Barbarian peoples are content to 
see the seasons come and go and to learn in rude 
ways the use of tree and shrub and plant. Men 
were content once to search after the Golden Fleece, 
and to waste precious years and oceans of blood in 
pursuit of the vagrant Helen of Troy. To-day men 



The Sacrament of Spring 221 

are searching into God's secrets : peering into the 
calyx of a little flower and asking it a hundred 
questions; dropping a plummet of inquiry into the 
silkworm's cocoon, to know the ways thereof; build- 
ing colleges and universities even to learn the se- 
cret of the rings in trees and the knots on the bark. 
Why, a little while ago an army of University men 
East and West were studying nothing else than to 
find out the cause of a certain disease or defect of 
peach-trees which resulted in a split seed ! 

"How they grow!" "How they grow!" 
Nature voices it, science echoes it, life itself em- 
phasizes it. The springtime returns and the mira- 
cle comes again. Bulbs spring into beauty, seeds 
burst into glory, dull plants overwhelm us with 
wonder. " How they grow ! " " How they 
grow ! " Do you not hear in all this the Lord's 
appeal for growth? He is interested in lilies, but 
a thousand-fold more in children, in men and 
women. Are they gaining anything in beauty? 
Have they any refined sentiment in their hearts 
to-day? Is there any "sensitiveness of the heart 
for God " — which is Sabatier's definition of rev- 
erence — any quiet joy of the soul in spiritual blos- 
som and fruitage? 

Walk about in the springtime; every violet and 
spring-beauty and wakerobin and sprig of arbutus 



222 The Art of Sailing On 

and every gorgeous lily of the field is piping up in 
the chorus, " How they grow ! " " How they 
grow! " And when you enter the sanctuary there 
are other voices speaking the same words, voices 
of sages and prophets and kings, voices of dis- 
ciples and apostles, of preachers and choir-masters, 
and of all simple hearts who with Christ have con- 
sidered the lilies, the lilies that have grown in every 
field, everywhere, and the lilies that have grown up 
about his cross and about his pathway wherever he 
has walked with men. 

Oh, how eager is the Master Agriculturist of 
hearts to find growth in the fields where human 
lilies grow ! Yet not by worry, not by strain, not 
by toil. For the Master's appeal is for restfulness 
and trustfulness, and quiet waiting and working, 
and faithful standing in one's place, and joyous 
doing of one's duty, with the heart always uplifted 
in eager, buoyant faith and expectancy. " They 
toil not, neither do they spin." 

There is no need of managing for God. Growth 
— that does not come by toiling and spinning! It 
comes by being " rooted and grounded," by catch- 
ing the nourishing sunbeams, the quickening rain- 
drops. Do not worry, ye children of the Heavenly 
Father. Be his children through his Son. " Seek 
first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness." 



The Sacrament of Spring 223 

Wait for him; do your appointed task; leave all 
the rest. " Shall he not much more clothe you, O 
ye of little faith? " Work, but also wait and trust 
and hope and pray and believe and expect. What 
lily thinks of worrying, with the Father of Lights 
stooping to pour his glory upon it? 

These bodies — he will array them, put new and 
brighter clothing upon them, in the Resurrection 
Day. There is another stanza of that poem about 
the " uncouth bulb " and the " ugly worm." It is 
this: 

" A body wearing out, 

A crumbling house of clay! 
O agony of doubt 

And darkness and dismay! 
Trust God and see 
What I shall be— 
His best surprise 
Before your eyes! " 

These souls of ours — " it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be " ! " If God so clothe the grass 
of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast 
into the oven, how much more "I " We know that 
when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we 
shall see him as he is " ! 

Yes, there is a new feeling in the heart to-day. 
We have come again to the Sacrament of Spring. 



224 The Art of Sailing On 

There is a new baptism of God's presence here in 
the world. Every lily that grows, every tree that 
bursts into bloom, proclaims him. Nothing is old 
now ; everything is new. The world has a strange 
elixir of life poured out upon it. 

My Master is here too amid all this life and 
growth. I can see him walking among the lilies 
" across the sea." I can hear his gentle words to 
his disciples, his disciples who were children, like 
all of us, of carking care and worry. I can hear 
him saying to them and to us all, " Why are ye 
anxious? Consider the lilies." Theirs is a restful, 
trustful life. They stand in their place each day. 
They have no fears, no bickerings, no bitter jeal- 
ousies. They suffer no distrust ; they work and wait 
and grow, lifting up their heads to rejoice in the 
Father of Lights. 

Oh, it was not a profound thing for the Lord 
to say; it had the merit of great simplicity. Never- 
theless it was a satisfying thing. And the new 
feeling in my heart to-day in the glory of the spring- 
time is just this — a feeling, a desire, a hope, that 
I may be quiet and trustful in that way, that I may 
lift up my head and rejoice before God, that I may 
enter into the full inheritance of a child of God. 

" Shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of 
little faith?" 



POWER FROM ON HIGH 



" Tarry ye . . . until ye be clothed with power 
from on high." 

Luke 24:49. 



XIV 
POWER FROM ON HIGH 

The end was drawing nigh, and in those last 
solemn hours the Master spoke many high and 
joyous words to his disciples. He was the Prince 
of optimists, and he constantly cast the horoscope 
of the Gospel in terms of radiant hopefulness. 

Imagine the scene : the eleven disciples and they 
" that were with them " gathered together in an 
upper room on the evening of the Resurrection, 
and Jesus talking to this imperfectly organized and 
wholly inadequate band of men about power! 
Surely this was a contradiction of terms, even a 
confusion of ideas ! If he had been speaking to 
strong men about power, to men fully equipped 
by education and training, there would have been 
apparent reason for the words. Some of these men 
were fishermen ! A few weeks ago they were toil- 
ing at their boats and their nets on Galilee. Not 
one of them was an " aristocrat " ; not one of them 
had ever sat in the seats of the mighty. They 
could fish, or gather taxes, or do any one of a 
227 



228 The Art of Sailing On 

number of common world-things. But what reason 
was there to think that they could teach men, or 
lay the foundations of an unearthly Kingdom, or 
move among the world-forces with any marked 
degree of success? 

Mr. Pictou tells us in his " Religion of the Uni- 
verse " that the most comprehensive and philo- 
sophical question ever put to him was asked by a 
little girl: " Sir, please tell me why there was ever 
anything at all." Remembering the meagre human 
materials with which Jesus Christ began his work 
of building a Kingdom that cannot be moved, one 
is tempted to ask the child's question : " Why was 
there ever anything at all of the Gospel even half 
a generation after the Ascension? " 

If you seek evidences of Christianity, begin with 
the eleven in the upper room in Jerusalem. Think 
of them in all their unpreparedness. Recall the 
narrow environment out of which many of them 
came. Remind yourself that they were not many 
of them " wise after the flesh, not many mighty, 
not many noble," and then hear Jesus of Nazareth 
saying to these men, " Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
with power! " 

Our Lord's philosophy was not born in the dust. 
It came forth from between the Cherubim. There- 
fore he did not use world-measurements. In our 



Power from on High 229 

world of men and things power is something that 
we identify with the powerful. With us the race 
is apt to be to the swift. In world-thinking the 
battle goes to the strong battalions. We are always 
busy building up this theory of things. Give us 
many battleships, and armor-plate more than a 
foot thick ; then the nation will be powerful. Give 
us business methods that are quick and sure, that 
break down opposition and bring results; then our 
commerce will be powerful. Give us social meas- 
ures that magnify wealth and ornament and indi- 
vidual indulgence; then our society will be power- 
ful. This is the familiar form of world-thinking 
upon these principal topics. 

And yet even in our world of men and things we 
are constantly finding out how false this theory is. 
How often and with what glad surprise we discover 
that the nation's strength lies not in armaments, 
but in the diligent pursuit of the arts and indus- 
tries of peace; that the strength of commerce lies 
not in tricks of trade, but in honesty and strict in- 
tegrity; that the strength of society lies not in dis- 
play and selfishness, but in thoughtfulness, in per- 
sonal righteousness and mutual service. 

In whatsoever ways men make this discovery, 
new definitions of power are certain to result. Un- 
der this new light we may expect weak things tb 



230 The Art of Sailing On 

become strong, and empty vessels to become full. 
Under the inspiration of this changed conception 
of power men come to value the invisible as the 
source of the visible, and the spiritual as the back- 
ground of the physical. By the help of this new 
understanding of power even the form of life's 
questioning changes. We ask, not how big a man 
is, but how good he is. We inquire not merely as 
to the magnitude of a man's success; we wish to 
know whether it has been honest and fair. We 
are not so much concerned as to a man's theory of 
the universe; we want to know his theory of the 
conduct of life. 

These are things that make for power — real 
power. A man who manages a thousand or ten 
thousand other men, and does it successfully, but 
is himself a bad man, cannot be said to possess real 
power at all. He is the weakest of men, and his 
weakness may suddenly come to light in some great 
crisis of his history. A chain is never stronger than 
its weakest link. 

A man who moves with admirable poise and 
self-possession in society, swaying others by his per- 
sonal presence and prestige, but all the while is 
himself living an insincere and impure life, such 
a man has lost the secret of real power. To build 
up a great structure of success, and not to know 



Power from on High 231 

something greater than success — that is not power; 
it is weakness. 

The distinction is one between power from be- 
low and power from " on high." The real power 
that underlies the best things of a world like ours 
is a power from " on high." Wherever there is 
a spiritual force at work among men, we are aware 
that it is not of this world, we cannot identify it 
with the world's life: it comes from "on high." 
Whensoever we see the flowers and fruits of char- 
acter beginning to appear we are ready to confess 
that higher forces have been at work. This is one 
theological dogma in which all are agreed, that the 
power from " on high " is better than the power 
from below. If we cannot believe in such real 
power we are much to be pitied. We have thus 
lost the grip of the better things, the uplifting 
things. If we can believe in the power that lifts 
men up, that is the beginning of a Christian faith. 
Whensoever a man confesses that something is 
tugging at his soul, seeking to lift him up — con- 
fesses also that he is consciously in need of such 
uplifting — he is an embryo Christian; he is not far 
from the Kingdom of God. 

The term " power from on high " belongs es- 
pecially to Jesus Christ. He has made it signify 
much. It is no " glittering generality." We must 



232 The Art of Sailing On 

all reckon with our Lord's language on the subject 
of power. It occupies a large place in his teaching. 
This conversation with his disciples was one of his 
last interviews with them, and he gave them his 
theory of power. Luke tells us in the first chapter 
of the book of Acts that he spoke in like manner 
to his disciples just before the Ascension : " Ye shall 
receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon 
you." I say that we must reckon with Christ's 
theory of power if we are going to concern our- 
selves with his teachings at all. If you want to 
know Napoleon's theory of power you must study 
army battalions and methods of command and the 
deployment of troops. If you want to know 
Christ's theory of power, you must deal with his 
direct command: "Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
with power from on high." 

Our Lord undertook to establish his Church in 
this distinction as to power from on high. It is 
the key to much of his teaching. The Church of 
Jesus Christ was to be unlike any other organiza- 
tion. It was not to trust in numbers. It was not 
to be enamored of mere success. It was not to be 
caught in the shallows of worldly favor. It was 
not to lick the hands of kings and princes. It was 
not to bargain for the influence of men or truckle 
in any manner for worldly power. 



Power from on High 233 

All this was very strange. The disciples were 
long in understanding it. Again and again they 
asked Jesus if he would not presently restore the 
Kingdom to Israel and give the people of God 
earthly power. On at least one occasion the Lord 
escaped from his own followers because he saw that 
they wanted to take him and make him a King by 
force. At times when he wrought miracles in the 
presence of his followers he gave them a strange 
command. Instead of commanding them to go 
and tell the story of what they had witnessed, he 
bade them not to tell about the miracles at all. 
Was our Lord afraid to have his miracles known? 
Did he lack confidence in his own works of power? 
No, it was not that. But he did fear the popular 
clamor that might come about them. He feared 
that many would see in them a kind of power that 
might play into the hands of earthly ambition. So 
he bade his disciples not to noise about the story 
of his miracles. He preferred that his followers 
should brood over these works of power in their 
own hearts, and recognize in them the presence of 
a spiritual force that would create a new invisible 
kingdom in the lives of men. 

He had no thought of turning his ministry into 
mere miracle-mongering. He would not feed men 
with miracles. If he had done so, they would have 



234 The Art of Sailing On 

developed an enormous appetite for miracles; they 
would have demanded miracles always as the sign 
of power. Feeding men with miracles has always 
been a dubious experiment. The Catholic Church 
has suffered incalculably from its miracles of 
Lourdes and Saint Anne de Beaupre. When men 
see piles of canes and crutches cast aside at these 
shrines they are apt to say, " Behold the power of 
the Christian religion ! " whereas Christ meant a 
wholly different thing when he said, " Tarry ye 
until ye be clothed with power from on high." 
The modern cult of Christian Science is making this 
tremendous mistake over again — feeding the people 
with miracles of healing. The people like it; they 
are running after it in bewildering crowds. Jesus 
Christ could have had great crowds always if he 
had been willing to exploit his healing powers. If 
he had been willing to make his Gospel center in 
the miracles, no doubt he would have fascinated 
the people. The world always runs after a healer ! 
Among heathen tribes the medicine-man with his 
incantations is a king. 

But if Jesus had exploited healing in this way 
how different the story of the Gospel would have 
been ! It would have been the story of a distorted, 
a degenerate Gospel. Its power would have been 
identified mainly with physical healing. The Chris- 



Power from on High 235 

tian Society would have dwindled into a mere mira- 
cle-sect, and its spiritual doctrines would have been 
twisted and shrunken until they became mere 
medical formulae, prescriptions and recipes for 
bodily health. The Christian sanctuary too must 
have changed its character with this failure to dis- 
tinguish as to the real nature of Christian power. 
It must have become, not a place of worship, of 
spiritual feeling and resolve, a place where men 
reckon with their sins in the sight of God, but a 
place in which men would reckon rather with their 
aches and pains. 

One of the most dangerous things men can do 
in the name of religion is to play with miracle 
and to exploit healing. In early times, as well as 
in modern times, this has been done. It has never 
failed to attract its crowds. It has always num- 
bered its devotees by the thousands. But it has 
invariably left the Gospel of Christ a poor broken, 
one-sided thing, its power frittered away in physical 
ambitions, its glory reduced to the measure of a 
bodily pain. One might suppose that the spectacle 
of a modern " prophet " building his " Zion " upon 
a foundation of healing, and playing at miracle to 
the cost of many thousands of dollars drawn from 
the pockets of a bewildered and fascinated multi- 
tude, would be testimony enough to the fallacy of 



236 The Art of Sailing On 

all such interpretations of the Gospel of our Lord, 
who, when he gave his farewell instructions to his 
disciples, said to them, " Tarry ye until ye be 
clothed with power from on high." 

Our Lord desires his Church to know the real 
secret of power: it is power from on high. Such 
power is worth waiting for. Tarry ye until ye be 
clothed with such power. How little haste there 
is about our Lord! He would not thrust his 
Church out into the world without equipment. 
Power and patience are closely akin. Tarry ye! 
Tarry ye ! 

What a word of caution this is, and it is much 
needed! One temptation is always with us — the 
temptation to haste away to other things. Christ's 
word is always calling us back to the real things 
of the Christian life. Wait for these, he is saying 
to his disciples. Tarry ye! Tarry ye! 

The Church's real power is the power of a 
spiritual life. I have spoken of the seeming incon- 
gruity of talking to that little company of eleven 
men about having power. But they were a " trans- 
figured " band. They were " a band of men whose 
hearts God had touched," and when the Day of 
Pentecost came they would be still more a com- 
pany of Spirit-filled men. It is an interesting thing 
to watch the manufacture of power. It begins back 



Power from on High 237 

there with the waterfall, even back of that with the 
hills and watersheds and mountain-lakes, and back 
of that with clouds and rainfall and such forces as 
gravitation. Then there is machinery, too : there 
are lines and pipes and engines and turbine-wheels, 
and you can stand by and watch the revolution of 
wheels and hear the whirr of machinery, and pres- 
ently you are told that power has been manufac- 
tured. But there is so much that you have not seen 
in the process, so much that you cannot see. The 
making of power is ever a mysterious thing — all 
the more if it be spiritual power. You remember 
how impressively the Lord spoke to his disciples 
about the Holy Spirit. He even said that it was 
expedient for him to go away, for he said, " If I 
go not away the Spirit will not come." And he 
said that that Spirit was a mysterious Power. You 
recall in what terms he described the Spirit: " The 
wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the 
voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh 
and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born 
of the Spirit." 

This is altogether the surest and clearest thing 
that we know about the Spirit of God. The com- 
ing of the Spirit is the mysterious making of power 
— power from on high, spiritual power — in the 
hearts of believers; and our Lord said, It is ex- 



238 The Art of Sailing On 

pedient that I go away, that ye may realize this 
accession of power, this quiet growth within you 
of spiritual grace and wisdom, this nourishing deep 
within the breast of the life and energy of God. 
" Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is 
come upon you." For his early Church the Lord 
appointed a great day for this accession of power, 
because the early Church needed a special demon- 
stration of divine energy, needed in a very evident 
way the coming of a Comforter. The story in the 
Acts of the Apostles says : " When the Day of 
Pentecost was now come," it was like a sound from 
heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, " and it filled 
all the house where they were sitting." For the 
moment the power became even a visible thing; 
" tongues parting asunder like as of fire " appeared 
unto them, " and it sat upon each one of them." 
Our Lord's great miracle thus was a spiritual some- 
thing: it was power from on high. If you will 
have miracle look at this! If you must be com- 
forted by healings, then see how God sent forth 
his Spirit to comfort men in the Gospel of his Son, 
to heal the breach of the soul, and to give them 
power from on high. 

The same mysterious making of power in men 
goes on always under the Gospel. Pentecost was 
not self-exhausting. It was not the last or final 



Power from on High 239 

word of power from on high. It was rather the 
visible setting up of a standard. " Speaking with 
tongues " does not repeat itself. " Tongues part- 
ing asunder, like as of fire," are not perpetuated. 
These were accessories to the fact. Nevertheless 
fire will still burn in the heart of the believer, and 
power will still encamp in the upper room of an 
open soul. And ever with that touch of mystery 
which must invariably accompany the creation of 
power, " thou hearest the voice thereof, but know- 
est not." Who can define spiritual power? Who 
can mark out the working of the Spirit of God in 
the souls of men ? 

" Tarry ye until ye be clothed with power from 
on high." This was the Lord's final message to 
his Church. As if he would tell us that this was 
to be valued above all else. As if he would cau- 
tion us not to emphasize other things above this 
priceless thing. 

The promise is perpetual. It is the promise of 
the Father. Pentecost is not a date, a day; it is 
an experience. The Church lives on in this way, 
by the renewal of the inward man, by the power 
from on high. Let us confess to that great mys- 
terious working of the Spirit of God. Without it 
the Church is stripped bare like a tree in winter. 
Without it the Church is a machine, an organiza- 



240 The Art of Sailing On 

tion, a system. The great thing about the Church 
is its spiritual power. Oh, let us listen to our Lord 
when he says this : " Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
with power from on high." Without it the Church 
is like a windmill, flapping bare hands against the 
empty sky; an angel it may be, but an angel beating 
its wings in vain against the resisting void. 

The spiritual life that is always growing in the 
world, how quiet yet how tremendous it is ! Power 
is as still as it is mysterious. God's deepest work- 
ings are quiet. You are conscious of this. The 
power of the Spirit to you and to me is a profound 
personal experience. It is a conscious need of our 
souls, the deepest need that we know anything 
about. That miracle is always going on, the mira- 
cle of divine renewal. " I will not leave you deso- 
late; I will come unto you." Wait for him! He 
will not tarry, but will come. 

How often it transpires that souls are thus en- 
dued with power because they have been tarrying 
for it. One said to me at close of morning service 
a week ago, " I have been asking God to give me 
something special to do." That is tarrying for 
God, and he will speak to all such. If there are 
a few souls even tarrying for God's power, the 
Church will grow richer in spiritual life and power. 
I recall a revival that came into the college. It 



Power from on High 241 

was so mysterious that no one knew how it had 
come. A few students had been tarrying in one of 
the rooms at midnight to pray. 

How often we have felt a new pressure of the 
hand, or have seen a new light in the eye, or have 
heard a new tenderness in the voice ! Men do not 
go to the housetops and shout out the news when 
the Spirit of God comes with power, it is such a 
profound personal experience, so quiet and per- 
vasive, so deep down in the soul. One will scarcely 
speak about it willingly, because it is so deep and 
precious, like the love that a man has for his own 
wife and children. A man does not boast of these 
things; no more does a man boast when he feels that 
God is closer to his soul than before. But he knows 
how real and true a thing it is. It is down there 
in his deepest consciousness; it is touching and re- 
fining everything that is worth while within him; 
it is illuminating all his darkness and sweetening 
everything that is bitter. 

Do not indulge any mistake about this matter of 
spiritual power. It is not at all to be confused with 
mere shoutings or blowing of trumpets. Any one 
can shout, but a man must tarry with his God to 
be clothed with power from on high. But when 
power comes it will be felt — ah ! yes, it will be felt 
in deep, mysterious, joyous ways. Worship will be 



242 The Art of Sailing On 

sweeter; the highways to Zion will lead through 
your heart, and your feet will hasten upon the way. 
You will pass through the Valley of Weeping, and 
it will turn out to be a Place of Springs. God will 
make Baca a well ! The early rain will drop upon 
the dusty way; you will go from strength to 
strength. 

There are signs of the Spirit that are quite un- 
mistakable; men learn to mark them and rejoice. 
One of them is testimony. Power is ever so quiet, 
nevertheless it is tremendous. It must make itself 
felt: that is testimony: it is power making itself 
felt. Often it is an utterance in words; often it 
is an utterance without words, like Mendelssohn's 
11 Songs Without Words." Where there are new 
accessions of power there will be new forms of 
testimony. A man will have felt that some Chris- 
tian task was too much for him; now his testimony 
is that it grows easier for him. This is how power 
works out in testimony. 

Another sign of power in the Church is con- 
version. " It is the greatest word the Christian 
Church can boast " — this word conversion. The 
Church needs to tarry until it is clothed with power 
such as this. It seems often very hard to find the 
way into human hearts. Many messengers have 
come back, always with the same report: "The 



Power from on High 243 

door is closed." The old indifference, the old 
neglect, the old unbelief! One day a messenger 
comes back to say, " The door is open ! " It seems 
very hard to find the way into human hearts. 
When there is spiritual power in the Church it 
becomes very easy. 

Another token of power is in the stress which 
men give to prayer. If you dislike or despise a 
person, you have probably never dared to pray 
for him. Prayer is a healing power. There is a 
melting of hearts when men pray for one another. 
It builds bridges, not alone between God and us, 
but between one soul and another. When you 
tarry for power prayer grows more precious. It 
will seem like a band of steel holding Heaven in 
your grip. Better than that, it will seem like a 
whispering wind wafting God's comfort and 
strength to your soul. Do you know how to pray 
like that? " Tarry ye, tarry ye, until ye be clothed 
with power from on high." A critic said of John 
Milton one day, " He does not pray." But his 
friend, who knew him better, replied, " His whole 
life is a prayer." 

Another sign is eagerness in doing God's work. 
Oh, for an eager Church of God everywhere ! I 
doubt not it is the cry of Jesus Christ above. 
Tarry ye for this power, the power of willing, 



244 The Art of Sailing On 

eager spirits. " My people shall be willing in the 
day of my power." 

When the Church is willing and eager it will 
not hesitate to dare. " First ponder and then dare " 
— that was Von Moltke's motto, the man of whom 
it was said that he could be silent in seven lan- 
guages. When the Church is in this mood there 
are few difficulties. Mountains become molehills; 
stone fences become wisps of hay. God wants a 
conquering Church, a daring Church, a Church that 
does not pause at ant-hills. The Apostle Paul was 
in this mood of power; it was down deep in the 
consciousness of his soul; and he said, " I can do all 
things in Him that strengtheneth me." Savona- 
rola, that flaming prophetic spirit of Italy's fifteenth 
century, was in this mood of power, when he cried 
aloud, " No enemy, no fight; no fight, no victory! " 

When the Church of Jesus Christ is without 
power it is afraid of everything! When it has 
power it dares everything! When men are with- 
out power from on high they attempt little for God. 
Their initiative grows dull, their enterprise grows 
feeble. They are like puppets in the presence of 
difficulty: the wind drives them about. When men 
have power their minds grow active for God and 
they are full of spiritual alertness. Their re- 
sources increase, their enterprise broadens, their 



Power from on High 245 

spirits grow eager, they become masterful. Oh, 
it is wonderful how the Spirit of God works in 
the souls of men ! Dry bones even are made to live 
and are clothed with living flesh. We can see, can 
we not, the meaning of the Holy Spirit, the mean- 
ing of the dispensation of the Spirit? Christ would 
have a living Church, a Church clothed with power. 
Therefore he said, " Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
with power from on high." 

A man loves to clothe his dear ones with gar- 
ments of beauty. Now and then a man will go to 
a place where preciouG things are kept and select 
some jewel or ornament to adorn the person of one 
whom he loves. Christ loved his Church and gave 
himself for it. When he would clothe his Church 
he bethought himself of a clothing of power; there- 
fore he sent forth the Spirit of Power. When he 
would ornament his Church he considered that no 
ornaments are so fine as those that shine with an 
inward light. Therefore he coveted for his Church 
such beautiful things as testimony and conversion, 
such precious ornaments as praise and prayer, such 
adornment as the adornment of a spiritual life, and 
such sparkling joy as the joy of eager spirits. 

When a man has won the maiden of his choice, 
and she stands by his side arrayed in the garments 
of love, there is a joy in his heart that is as high 



246 The Art of Sailing On 

as the mountain-tops and as deep as the valleys. 
Such is Christ's joy in his redeemed Church clothed 
in the garments of love and power, for the Church 
is his bride. Let us turn once more to the Epistle, 
and read : " Husbands, love your wives, even as 
Christ also loved the Church and gave himself up 
for it: that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it 
by the washing of water with the word, that he 
might present the Church to himself a glorious 
Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such 
thing." Glorious ambition of the Son of Man! 
He desires to clothe his Bride in power 1 



THE PASSING OF SIMPLICITY 



" A maris life consisteth not in the abundance of 
the things which he possesseth." 

Luke 12: 15. 



XV 

THE PASSING OF SIMPLICITY * 

On the fourteenth of August, 1851, at the cel- 
ebration of the Centennial of Litchfield County, 
Mass., Horace Bushnell delivered his now famous 
sermon on " The Age of Homespun." He re- 
minded his hearers that the greatness of the past 
was not the greatness of its great men alone, but 
rather the fidelity of the multitude of common 
men : and he drew a most engaging picture of the 
simple Age of Homespun, when men were as yet 
unencumbered by the burden of things, and lived 
a life of such simplicity as seems to us in our time 
impossible if not ludicrous. 

The change from the days of spinning and weav- 
ing is so wonderful as almost to stagger the most 
active imagination. Yet the Age of Homespun is 
not very far removed. A span of two or three 
generations at most is all that separates us from 
the days when men lived close to nature, and drew 
their supplies from her abundant lap by hand, with- 
out the intervention of machinery; when domestic 

*A sermon for Thanksgiving Day. 
249 



250 The Art of Sailing On 

life and social life as well were exceedingly simple, 
and men found time to meditate upon the riches 
that are other than worldly, the abundance that is 
better than the " abundance of things." So close 
indeed does that age of simplicity seem that many 
of us who call ourselves young have fresh mem- 
ories of fathers and mothers, and still more of 
grandfathers and grandmothers, who were prod- 
ucts of the Age of Homespun. There are indeed 
not a few of us who could say, " My father went 
to school in the little red schoolhouse on the hill "; 
or, " My grandfather wore homespun clothing, 
made out of home-grown wool, that was spun on 
the old spinning-wheel and woven in the great 
loom in the old farmhouse"; or, "My grand- 
mother, whose well-preserved daguerreotype shows 
the simple beauty of long ago, wore linsey-woolsey 
dresses made by her own hand, which deftly fol- 
lowed the process of manufacture all the way from 
field and pasture until the finished product adorned 
her dear old person." 

Imagine if you can the change from the time 
when your grandmother or mine made her own 
dresses of flax and wool, to the present day when 
Parisian models and bewildering fancies in ma- 
terial and form make the Age of Homespun seem 
centuries distant. 



The Passing of Simplicity 251 

The change has been complete, although here 
and there in isolated communities one may still 
find survivals of the Age of Homespun. Even in 
the great city, if one were to search for it, would 
doubtless still be found grandsires or grandmothers 
of other generations who cling in spirit to the sim- 
plicities of their childhood. And it is well that 
we should feel the attractiveness of the Age of 
Simplicity that has passed and is rapidly passing 
before our eyes. 

At Thanksgiving-time especially it were well 
for the hearts of older men and women to turn 
back with a very tender affection to the memories 
of early days, and to the men and women, some 
of them our own kindred, who peopled the stage 
of action in the hours when the mind was as wax 
to receive and as marble to retain the first impres- 
sions of life. The value of a Day of Thanksgiv- 
ing in part is found in the spirit of reminiscence, 
in the quickening of memory. For a people can- 
not be intelligently thankful to God by observing 
the present alone. We have come out of a great 
background, out of a large past, that is richly 
stored, like old cellars, with the fine wine of 
memory and experience. It were well, too, for 
the younger members of our communities to try 
to understand something of the elder days of 



252 The Art of Sailing On 

our nation, and to realize our indebtedness as a 
people to those sturdy men and strong women 
whose portraits now often look down upon us 
from the walls of stuffy libraries, but whose lives 
were lived in the hand-to-hand struggle with na- 
ture which belongs of necessity to pioneer life. 
For it is very true that our nation was not built 
alone by the great men who sat in legislative halls, 
ruled in chairs of state, and framed our now his- 
toric documents, whose monuments are to be seen 
in our parks, driveways, and Halls of Fame. In 
a sense far deeper and truer our nation was built 
by the common people, by shopkeepers, and builders 
of houses, and road-builders, and farmers, and 
other toilers in the simple tasks of life. 

To know the history of a nation such as ours 
one must know more than the history of its great 
origins, its great events, its crises, its growth, its 
wars. One must also know that silent literature 
which is, as it were, the background of the litera- 
ture which is written. In this silent literature 
are recorded the deeds of the domestic hearth 
unheralded before men. Here also are written 
the silent processes of rude schools in the forests, 
the far-away beginnings of colleges and universi- 
ties. And here also are recorded those stories 
of pioneer heroism wherein are heard the echoes 



The Passing of Simplicity 253 

of falling trees and of cracking rifles, as men not 
" cast in gentle mould " carved their way into the 
heart of the continent. 

How interesting as we look back are the sim- 
plicities of that elder day ! Communities were 
small, and neighbors were truly neighbors in those 
simple hospitalities which as yet had not been 
driven to the wall by a busy age. There was time 
then for the interchange of the small but ever 
valuable currency of courtesy and human interest, 
for the great blight of indifference had not as yet 
fallen upon the minds of men and the barrier of 
distance had not yet been raised. To the elaborate 
tastes of our day, which must have ever a greater 
variety of diversion, how bare and unattractive 
seem those scenes of social interest of long ago ! 
If one would measure the distance we have trav- 
eled away from the Age of Simplicity, let him 
contrast a modern social function, a reception for 
example, with the apple-paring or quilting-bee of 
our grandmothers' day! With all the sternness 
of the contrast we are bound to feel how en- 
gaging those early pictures are ! And if one have 
even a little bit of imagination he will see that in 
such bare and economic scenes were growing those 
domestic virtues, those ideals of friendship, com- 
radeship, industry, and homely worth, which, 



254 The Art of Sailing On 

please God, shall never pass away from our na- 
tion's life, come whatsoever there may of change 
in our ways of living! 

Other like scenes crowd into the vista of that 
vanished age which is still not so far removed, 
days of military training for example, when rustic 
shoulders bent from following the plough were 
straightened by patriotic impulse; days of corn- 
huskings too, and of house-raisings, when men bor- 
rowed the willing strength of brother men for 
the common toils of life. 

Most interesting of all, especially when poets 
touch the scenes, are the pictures of family groups 
and social groups seated about the open fire in 
the home, for the center of all in that Age of 
Simplicity was ever the home. That blazing fire 
on the open hearth — how far out into the night 
of Time its light shines ! Perchance it reaches 
even into Eternity. Let us quote Dr. Bushnell's 
picturesque description of the home circle at the 
open fireplace: 

" In the early dusk the home circle is drawn more 
closely and quietly round it; but a good neighbor and his 
wife drop in shortly from over the way and the circle 
begins to spread. Next a few young folk from the other 
end of the village, entering in brisker mood, find as many 



The Passing of Simplicity 255 

more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to receive 
them also. And then a friendly sleighful of old and 
young that have come down from the hill to spend an 
hour or two spread the circle again, moving it still farther 
back from the fire: and the fire blazes just as much higher 
and more brightly, having a new stick added for every 
guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of 
style. They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are 
serious and gay by turns, or the young folks go on with 
some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing 
some hard point of theology in the minister's last sermon, 
or perhaps the greater danger coming to sound morals from 
the multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Mean- 
time the good housewife brings out her choice stock of 
home-grown exotics gathered from three realms, doughnuts 
from the pantry, hickory nuts from the chamber, and the 
nicest, smoothest apples from the cellar. And then as the 
tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on majestically 
toward nine the conversation, it may be, takes a little more 
serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy even- 
ing may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the 
circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on 
every face which is itself the truest language of a social 
nature blessed in human fellowship." 

Such was the polite society of two generations 
or more ago, although there should be added other 
pictures done sometimes in colors gray, but more 



256 The Art of Sailing On 

often in colors gay, of the village school, and of 
the singing-school held in the evening, wherein 
young men and maidens learned not only to mingle 
their voices but often to join their hands and hearts. 
There should be added also some steel-engravings 
representative of the religious life and worship of 
the day; the bare but stately meeting-houses, with- 
out heat in winter, and the straight pews without 
the luxury of cushions. In the early history of 
this church in which we are worshipping to-day, 
in one of its early locations in the lower part of 
Manhattan Island, there is a rare story of a 
doughty Scotch worshipper who, coming in one 
Sabbath to find a cushion in his pew, lifted it none 
too piously from its place and threw it upon the 
floor. I say that pictures such as these should be 
done in steel-engravings, because religion and wor- 
ship in that Age of Simplicity had a certain straight- 
ness and rigor about them, but withal they had also 
a certain majestic strength. To the men and 
women of that time religion had great, even stern, 
meanings, and if their attitude toward life seems 
to us unbending and even artificial, it may reflect 
more upon the laxity of our modern thinking than 
upon the stiffness of that earlier time. 

Surround these pictures with a very insistent 
industry which dignified toil and discounted idle- 



The Passing of Simplicity 257 

ness, together with a severe plainness in the man- 
ner of living and a very great economy of ma- 
terial, and out of all these common details see 
the State emerging, and the Church as well, with 
the American home always in the background as 
the constant of life and happiness, and the college 
also, with the university still in the shadow — and 
you have in brief something of the rare stuff 
out of which our nation was made. Nor is it 
necessary to urge that in the memory of such early 
simplicities as these we should find abundant 
reasons for thanksgiving. 

The background of our nation's life is seen in 
such an Age of Simplicity, wherein men lived and 
toiled without riches and luxury, and fought their 
way through hard conditions into well-earned ease. 
Let us thank God that the foundations of our 
nation were not laid in ease, nor were the begin- 
nings of its superstructure raised in the midst of 
plenty. 

It is true that the continent contained vast abun- 
dance of nature's wealth, but it had to be wrung 
from the soil, from the forests, from the rivers, 
from the mines. The nation was not built by 
aristocrats, but by toilers, men of the soil, men of 
the wilderness trail. The first chapters in our 
national history are chapters of pioneer struggle. 



258 The Art of Sailing On 

Those who were " broad-backed and brown- 
handed, with empires in their brains," wrought 
with axe and plough and rifle, and most of all 
with the vision of their own hearts, to win a 
continent and to make it blossom like the rose. 
Simplicity was the order of the day. Nature's 
material was intractable and yielded only to the 
persevering toil of strong men. Manhood and 
womanhood grew in the midst of that severe dis- 
cipline which nature loves to give her children, 
and which wealth and art too frequently take 
away. We have reason to thank God that our 
fathers and mothers for the most part were men 
and women of common life, 

" The common growth of mother earth, 
Her simplest mirth and tears." 

Let us thank God for the rude plough and the 
woodman's axe and the flatboat on the river, and 
the spinning-wheel and the loom, and the log cabin 
in the clearing, and the plain schoolhouse at the 
cross-roads, and the white church with the green 
blinds on the hillside — for such as these were the 
simple tools with which our forefathers did their 
enduring work! 

The Age of Simplicity has gone, gone forever, 
and its remnants are rapidly passing. The spin- 



The Passing of Simplicity 259 

ning-wheel and the loom rest quietly in the dim 
attic. Perchance the grandmother's spinning- 
wheel may now and again creep shyly into the 
library or even into the drawing room, but only 
as a curious relic of days gone by. That draw- 
ing room! — think of the contrast with the "best 
room " in your grandmother's home ! If we think 
farther back to the days of hewn-log cabins, we 
must rub our eyes and look for Aladdin's Lamp ! 
How great are the changes and how far-reach- 
ing! The Age of Simplicity has gone and the 
Age of Complexity has come. Albeit there is 
biting poverty in the land, still it is an Age of 
Plenty. The materials of life have vastly in- 
creased; it is an age of the abundance of things. 
Simplicity has gone out of our thinking and Com- 
plexity has come in. Our fathers thought in terms 
of twos and threes, we think in terms of the hun- 
dreds and thousands. The process begins in child- 
hood. Little boys and girls only a generation ago 
were content with simple games. When they 
played at jumping rope, it was sufficient to jump 
one rope at a time; nowadays the game is more 
complex — they must jump two ropes at once. Be- 
sides five jackstones to be thrown up and caught 
in the hand, the modern child must manage to 
catch a little rubber ball also. The simple old 



260 The Art of Sailing On 

ball games, " one-old-cat " and " two-old-cat," 
have lapsed into disuse, and your little six-year-old 
talks enthusiastically of " basc-on-balls," " home- 
runs," and " three-strikes-and-out." The broom- 
stick horse is rarely seen nowadays, unless it be 
in smaller communities, and instead of this simple 
delight of our childhood the boy of to-day plays 
with iron engines, often flying about a track by the 
power of steam or electricity. 

A modern cartoonist has amusingly shown the 
departure of simplicity from the small boy's Christ- 
mas expectations. On one side of the picture is 
the boy of a previous generation, content to have 
a solitary stocking filled with nuts, candies, and 
perchance one simple toy. On the other side of 
the picture is the present-day boy, having placed 
a bucket and a barrel, besides both stockings, in 
anticipation of the multitude of his gifts. It is a 
matter of no small moment that childhood has 
become so elaborate in its thinking. 

In almost every direction life takes on greater 
intricacy, and therefore greater difficulty and dan- 
ger. Simplicity has its drawbacks, but it is fraught 
with less peril. 

The progress of invention has multiplied facili- 
ties in such marvellous ways as to amaze even the 
most sluggish intellect. A few years ago a thought- 



The Passing of Simplicity 261 

ful person in a Thanksgiving Prayer-meeting said 
that she was thankful for sulphur-matches ! What 
would she say to-day if she could walk up and 
down our great Broadway shining to the top of 
heaven with the brilliancy of electric light! From 
the tallow-dip of our forefathers to the illumi- 
nated street of to-day — that is a contrast to make 
one pause. Yes, the Age of Simplicity has gone, 
and the Age of wonderful yet nerve-racking In- 
vention has come. Our fathers suffered, no doubt, 
because their candlelight was dim. We suffer in 
our turn because our light is so brilliant. 

In the matter of travel what a wonderful 
change ! A hundred years ago it was a tedious 
journey of nearly a week by stage-coach from Bos- 
ton to Philadelphia ; to-day rapid express trains tell 
off this distance in hours and minutes. The cor- 
ners of the earth are drawn up together by the 
marvels of human invention, like the corners of 
the sheet let down from heaven which the Apostle 
Peter saw in his vision; and like that sheet the 
world-wide vision of men to-day contains every 
manner of beast, both clean and unclean. There 
is no longer any distance in the world. China is 
our next-door neighbor, and the movements of her 
armies are read in our headlines morning and even- 
ing. " Far Cathay," which a generation ago was 



262 The Art of Sailing On 

the poet's acme of earthly distance, is brought to 
our doorstep; the heart of Africa is only a little 
removed. 

Great changes have come as well into the social 
organization: it is vastly more intricate and more 
difficult. The people who live far away have 
been brought nearer; but the people who live near 
have been taken farther away. World-neighbor- 
liness has increased; neighborliness on the street 
has decreased. Time was when neighbors dropped 
in. The women took their sewing and spent an 
afternoon. All this has departed with the Age 
of Simplicity. A social function once a year must 
take the place of the old-time visiting. Men and 
women are too busy. Everybody is driven. 
Nerves are at high tension. " Things are in the 
saddle; they ride men." The Palace of Life is 
not even a Palace of Art: it is a Palace of Wealth. 
The old discipline of meagre material has passed 
away. The world's trouble now is that it has so 
much to live upon, not so little. Quiet living has 
gone; life must be passed now in the midst of 
swift-moving instruments of life of every kind. 

With all this intricacy, the worries and burdens 
of life increase. As well say to the water on the 
stove, " Do not boil," or to the wood in the fire, 
11 Do not burn," as to say to the modern business 



The Passing of Simplicity 263 

man, " Do not worry." Now and then we hear 
that some modern Croesus has felt that he would 
gladly exchange all the glory, with the worry, of 
wealth for the simplicity, with the quiet, of his 
fathers. The truth is that many persons to-day 
are wearing themselves out in the effort to live. It 
is a day of increasing burdens. 

The temptation that men feel to-day is the temp- 
tation to live by their possessions. It is an age of 
many possessions. Men own the earth; they are 
just now claiming the air. The abundance of 
things increases. Things, possessions, properties, 
tangibilities — this is what it means when we say 
that the Age of Simplicity has passed and is pass- 
ing. The reign of plainness is well-nigh past in 
America. When Abraham Lincoln was alive the 
phrase " plain people " was still an epithet of 
honor: now it is a half-way reproach. We have 
grown " rich and increased with goods." Plain- 
ness went out of the window when wealth came 
in at the door. 

Everything of value suffers by the change. The 
home suffers. We do not quite say it, but we are 
apt to think it, that happiness depends on furni- 
ture. Religion suffers also. When men clutter 
up their lives with things, clutching them to their 
hearts as if they were imperishable, the spirit within 



264 The Art of Sailing Gist 

loses its desire for spiritual things. There is a 
certain permanent simplicity of soul that is the 
constant friend of religion. 

The Age of Simplicity will never return. It 
is useless to bemoan the fact. We cannot push 
back the hands on the dial. It is a new age, and 
it is a great age. It does not follow that the new 
age is not wonderful because it is so unlike the Age 
of Simplicity. We have no desire to say that the 
former days were better than these. On the con- 
trary, the former days were not so good as these 
days. The later days ought always to be the bet- 
ter days. What a wonderful thing it should be 
to us to live in this wonderful world! It ought 
to be more wonderful every day. 

Yet we must add that, because the Age of Sim- 
plicity has gone, there are new dangers in the 
world, dangers that are difficult to meet; and for 
this we need the Master of Simplicity to help us. 
The Master of Simplicity is Jesus Christ. He 
knew our life here in the world, and it was he who 
said, " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things which he possesseth." It is the 
Master of Simplicity who speaks, and his counsel 
is good for every age. 

Is it possible to live a simple life even in the 
midst of a great and complex age such as this? 



The Passing of Simplicity 265 

Yes, it is possible, if we follow the teaching of the 
Master of Simplicity. For simplicity after all is a 
state of mind, an attitude toward things and the 
world in general, and especially an attitude toward 
God and the eternal world. " A man is simple 
when his highest desire consists in wishing to be that 
which he should be : that is to say, a true and honest 
man." So Pastor Wagner has taught us. A 
man's life is simple when his mind is free and 
untrammelled by things and goes out gladly to the 
best things in life. A man who lives in that way 
will break up a great number of complexities. 
He will begin to live in the spirit, which is the 
best way to live. He will not live alone in his 
occupation, in his business, in his successes, neither 
in his worries, defeats, and sorrows.* 

This means that things must be subordinated to 
life itself: a man's life does not consist in things. 
Man does not live by bread alone. He has a 
soul to keep for eternity. If you are going to 
California, do not load yourself down with hand- 
baggage. You will need time to look at the 
flowers. But listen! if you are travelling to the 
land of unfading beauty, do not encumber your- 
self with baggage. Things weigh us down: feet 
grow heavy: shoulders become weary. It is un- 

* See " The Simple Life, " by Charles Wagner. 



266 The Art of Sailing On 

wise " to spend more on the frame than on the 
picture." Often a noble picture shows best in a 
plain frame. A man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of things. Do not cloy your eyes and 
ears with possessions. Give your soul opportun- 
ity to live, your mind time to meditate, your spirit 
time to pray. Beware of too much baggage in the 
journey of life; at least beware of thinking more 
about the baggage than about the journey and the 
journey's end. It is the Master of Simplicity who 
tells us all this. Let us keep the old simplicity 
in the midst of complexity. 

Let us keep the simplicity of the home, magni- 
fying the homely, domestic virtues of love and 
trust and kindly disposition. Let us keep the sim- 
plicity of friendship, refusing to permit it to be 
clouded by sophistication and artificiality, or to be 
debased by mere pleasantry or compliment, or to 
be easily overturned by adverse winds of criticism 
or rumor. Let us keep the simplicities of life 
among our fellow men — such as rugged honor and 
honesty, and the old-fashioned virtues of industry, 
economy, and personal purity, and a rigid sense 
of righteousness in public and private affairs. 

Let us keep the simplicity of religion: that 
nothing may dwarf the fact of God over us and 
in us, that reverence such as unspoiled children 



The Passing of Simplicity 267 

have for their parents may fill our hearts, that 
prayer may go out naturally and freely to the 
Heavenly Father, and the love and discipleship of 
Jesus may be the free and loyal attachment of 
twice-born men and women. Let us prize the 
severe virtues and the homely piety of spiritual 
men and women. 

It has been said of Jesus that he had very little 
baggage in life. " The Son of Man had not 
where to lay his head." He was not burdened by 
things. He had time to think of God and time 
to look at the lilies and the birds. He taught 
men not to despise the world, but to live spiritually 
in the world. He magnified the child-spirit. He 
deprecated the assurance that comes with worldly 
wealth and wisdom. He taught men the value 
of a gentle spirit, of simple speech, of sincere feel- 
ings. He bade them understand that life does 
not consist in the abundance of things which they 
possess, but rather in the fulness of their mental 
and spiritual life. 



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